Plane spotter or Chinese spy? Ontario student suspected of espionage at airports

Zeng appeared in a federal court in Detroit on Tuesday and agreed to remain in custody as he awaits his trial. A Chinese national studying at a college in Canada, Zeng has been studying in Canada on a B1/B2 visa that he was issued in 2022, according to the criminal complaint. Authorities said Zeng has entered the U.S. around 24 times since his visa was issued, including on April 11, when he drove a dark blue Chrysler Town & Country into Detroit via the Ambassador Bridge.

Customs and Border Protection agents that he was entering the U.S. to visit his sister in Chicago for a week and a half.

Airport Surveillance and the O’Hare FedEx Incident

Zeng first raised U.S. authorities’ suspicions in April, after an incident captured on security video at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, according to a criminal complaint reviewed by CBC News. At the time, FedEx employees spotted a man taking photos, climbing a forklift and attempting to open a locked delivery truck and a shipping container in the company’s parking lot at the Chicago airport, the criminal complaint said. According to the complaint, Zeng acknowledged he had climbed the forklift at O’Hare to get a better angle to take pictures.

Investigators later linked Zeng to a dark blue Chrysler Town & Country minivan with Ontario licence plates seen on nearby CCTV. Employees at a FedEx location at O’Hare International Airport saw an unknown individual in the employee parking lot who lingered for about 20 minutes, according to the complaint, and was seen taking photos, walking the fence line and attempting to open locked trailers. He also climbed onto a parked forklift and appeared to take photos, either of a parked aircraft or other areas of the airport.

FedEx surveillance footage indicated that the individual was a male of Asian descent, authorities allege in court documents. Additional surveillance video captured a dark blue Town & Country arriving in the employee parking lot shortly before the man was seen taking photos. Zeng allegedly re-entered Canada via the Windsor Detroit Tunnel on April 23, two days after the FedEx parking lot incident. American law enforcement later established that the license plate on Zeng’s Town & Country matched the plate on the vehicle seen at the FedEx parking lot at the Chicago airport, according to the complaint.

Border Interrogation and Shifting Explanations

This time, he was accompanied by two other individuals, whom he identified as his sister and his classmate. He said the three were making a one-day trip to Chicago. Border patrol agents referred him for a secondary inspection based on the incident at the FedEx parking lot. Instead, border officers interviewed him three separate times over the next several hours, according to the complaint.

And according to the criminal complaint, his story kept changing. At first, when border agents found numerous photos of military aircraft on his phone, Zeng purportedly said they were for a flight radar website. He said taking pictures of planes was his hobby.

Zeng's phone was also found to contain pictures of him and other individuals in tactical clothing and in tactical formations, holding rifle-styled firearms, FBI special agent Robert Holbrook wrote in the complaint. Zeng purportedly said the weapon was an airsoft gun. He denied having any military service or training.

Encrypted Communications and the Chinese Contact

According to the criminal complaint, Zeng eventually said he was being paid by someone — identified in the U.S. court records only as Chinese contact — to photograph specific planes and their tail numbers. Zeng believed his contact worked for a Chinese security service and that it was “cool,” according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Zeng said they had met on a Chinese forum for aviation enthusiasts in 2024.

Zeng, who lives in Cambridge, Ont., also outlined to investigators a convoluted system he purportedly used to communicate with the unnamed individual, who paid him via bank transfer in Chinese yuan. The Chinese contact would mail Zeng a new SIM card every four to five months, which he was directed to use in his Huawei cell phone, according to the criminal complaint.

Zeng, at the direction of 'Chinese Contact,' would subsequently destroy the SIM cards, delete the conversations, and delete the photos he took, Holbrook

Legal Proceedings in Federal Court

A 20-page complaint filed Wednesday in Detroit’s federal court charges Weiheng Zeng with making false statements. Online court records do not list an attorney for Zeng to comment. University of Waterloo representatives did not immediately return messages seeking information about Zeng’s studies at the school.