A California man has been arrested and charged with illegally shipping weapons and ammunition to North Korea, authorities said Tuesday.
Shenghua Wen, who came to the U.S. from China on a student visa more than a decade ago and stayed in the country illegally, was arrested and charged with conspiring to violate federal law barring the shipments, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles.
It was not immediately known whether Wen, who is 41 and lives in Ontario, California, had a lawyer. He is expected to appear in court later on Tuesday.
"It is essential that we protect our country from hostile foreign states that have adverse interests to our nation," Martin Estrada, U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said in a statement.
According to a copy of a federal complaint, Wen told U.S. authorities in interviews earlier this year that he had exported weapons and ammunition to North Korea at the request of its government. He said he met with North Korean officials at consular offices in China before he came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2012, the complaint said.
Wen said North Korean officials in China contacted him about two years ago to buy firearms and that he shipped two containers of weapons and other items from Long Beach, California, to North Korea via Hong Kong in 2023. He told U.S. authorities that he was wired about $2 million to do so, according to the complaint.
The FBI seized 50,000 rounds of ammunition from Wen's home about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Los Angeles that had been stored in a van parked in the driveway, the complaint said. They also seized a chemical threat identification device and a transmission detective device that Wen said he planned to send to the North Korean government for military use, the complaint said.
Wen came to the U.S. in 2012 on a student visa. His visa expired the following year and he was ordered deported in 2018, officials said.
