A new federal complaint filed in the Central District of California alleges that Shenghua Wen and unnamed co-conspirators “successfully exported at least two shipments of firearms and ammunition to North Korea by concealing the items inside shipping containers that were shipped from Long Beach, California, through Hong Kong, China, to North Korea.”
Weapons were seized from Wen’s Ontario, California home on August 14th. Authorities took possession of “two devices that Wen admitted he procured to send to the North Korean government for its military use,” court documents describe.
The devices were a “Serstech Arx mkII Pharma device — a chemical threat identification device” and “an ANDRE Deluxe Near-Field Detection device.”
Wen entered the United States in 2012 on a student visa and remained in the country illegally after the visa expired. He admitted to authorities that he met North Korean officials at two separate North Korean Consulates in China prior to entering the U.S.
He allegedly told investigators that the North Korean government wanted weapons and ammunition for an attack on South Korea. North Korean government officials wired Wen approximately two million dollars to purchase “firearms and other products,” the documents state.
Wen used other individuals to purchase the firearms on his behalf. The complaint notes that after he received the firearms, Wen “transported them to California, packed the firearms into a shipping container, and shipped the container to China, knowing that it would be transferred to North Korea.”
The complaint further explains that Wen told authorities that he “purchased many of the firearms that he sent to North Korea in Texas and that he drove the firearms from Texas to California on three separate trips.”
The shipments occurred between October 2023 and December 2023.
