Shadows of the Red Dragon: A Hardboiled Reckoning with CCP's EB-5 Sting in the Marianas
- CNMIGA .ORG
- Sep 19
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 22
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Persona Non Grata –
a gumshoe cast out from the shadows, nursing a grudge against the red serpent coiling 'round our sovereign shores. This ain’t no pulp yarn of molls and molotovs; it’s a cold dossier on the $70 million EB-5 swindle that’s got Beijing’s claws sunk deep into Tinian’s soil. Armed with GAO scalpels and FBI phantoms, I’ll carve through the CCP’s velvet noose: fraudsters, local turncoats, and quasi-humanitarian fronts strangling our bastion. Time to demand visa guillotines, DoD bulwarks, and an America First payback to yank the Marianas from the dragon’s maw.
Chapter 1: The Powder Keg – Geopolitics and the Serpent's Slow Squeeze
Picture the CNMI: fourteen specks of volcanic fury strung like jade beads across the Western Pacific’s endless blue, astride the First Island Chain from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Not your postcard paradise of swaying palms and mai tais – nah, this is Uncle Sam’s unsung fortress, a geopolitical tripwire against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) naval fever dreams. As the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) lays it bare in Tightening the Chain: Implementing a Strategy of Maritime Pressure in the Western Pacific, these islands are the anvil where we’d hammer Beijing’s armada, securing sea lanes that grease global trade’s wheels. But decades of Washington’s somnambulant watch – from Japanese mandate ghosts post-WWII to our 1978 commonwealth pact – let the termites in. Lax oversight turned a bulwark into a sieve, and by 2008, federalizing immigration slammed shut the sweatshop sluice but cracked wide the EB-5 door for CCP Trojan horses: "investments" promising jobs and green cards, delivering spies and shadow cash instead.
Dig into the Political Economy Research Institute’s (PERI) Shadow Banking in China: Institutional Risks (Working Paper 334, August 2013), and you’ll smell the rot. Authors Jianjun Li and Sara Hsu run China’s underbelly through stress tests, exposing trusts and wealth gimmicks that dodge oversight like a fence in a Chinatown raid – breeding non-performing loans, liquidity black holes, and bankruptcy bombs. That’s the playbook for the Tinian Ocean View Resort mirage: a $130 million pipe dream of luxury spires on barren rock, peddled to yankee suckers while funneling dough to Beijing’s vaults.
Enter Bridge Investment Group LLC (BIG), a Hong Kong fog-shrouded outfit with a Saipan street address, playing real estate developer like a mark at three-card monte. From 2015, they reeled in 130-odd Chinese high-rollers via the American Northern Marianas Regional Center (ANMRC), pocketing $67.8 million on vows of EB-5 nirvana. But FinCEN’s Advisory FIN-2025-A003 (August 28, 2025) blows the lid: Chinese Money Laundering Networks (CMLNs) – pros in bed with Jalisco New Gen Cartel (CJNG) and Sinaloa wolves – thrive in these gray zones. Compartmentalized like a syndicate’s cells, they tap diaspora mules (think Chinese undergrads at UCLA shuttling funny money) and fake ID mills (per ICE’s Cornerstone Report #48 on bogus passports) to rinse drug bucks, trafficking spoils, and spy slush funds through legit-looking channels. Echoes in Tinian: funds vanish into ether, leaving a refurbished warehouse masquerading as the Diamond Hotel & Casino – 18,000 square feet of flop, shuttered by December 2024 with zilch jobs or returns.
CSBA’s Indo-Pacific Stronghold: Northern Australia’s Role in the Australia-U.S. Alliance ties the noose tighter: Tinian and Darwin form AUKUS anchors, southern flanks against the red surge. Yet BIG’s scam erodes it, turning DoD drill grounds into CCP playgrounds. Persona Non Grata’s own The Monopolization of the Marianas – etched in memory of David North, that immigration sleuth from the Center for Immigration Studies – unmasks the United Front: investment bait laced with espionage hooks and polly~anna proxies like Tan Holdings, monopolizing realty, votes, and grub lines. Pre-fraud Tinian? A sleepy missile range. Post-BIG? A betrayer’s bazaar, where locals like Phillip Mendiola-Long (BIG’s COO) grease palms on land grabs, while Chamorro folk scrape by amid rusting docks and imported peonage.
Thomas G. Mahnken’s June 25, 2025, testimony to the Select Committee on the CCP lays the asymmetry bare: Our freewheeling labs birth wonders; Beijing’s politburo midwives theft and coercion, from AI heists to financial feints. In CNMI, EB-5 "deals" cloak shadow risks – NPL balloons popping solvency bubbles, per PERI’s probes – letting nationals nestle fox-like near DoD sites, ripe for eavesdropping or cartel rinses as FinCEN flags. The United Filipino Organization (UFO)? A "community" front peddling Filipino CW-1 fodder as cannon fodder for Chinese rackets, diluting native voices in Beijing’s divide-et-impera game. North’s legacy – Sloan-Ford tomes on labor’s bleed, Labor gigs, Hill grillings – screams the fix: Reclaim via DoD iron, gut UFO webs, fortify against the crimson creep. Complacency’s the killer; time to wake.
Chapter 2: The Heist Unraveled – $70 Million EB-5 Caper and Its Security Sting
February 24, 2025: The gavel cracks in SDNY’s Tianyi Wei v. Erik Wang et al. (1:25-cv-01567-JMF), a blistering brief like a .45 slug to the CCP’s gut. Plaintiff Wei – a Beijing bird who flew the coop to St. Kitts for EB-5 cover – claws back $1.75 million: her $800k stake, interest, and punitive haymakers for the grift. Amended March 6 (1:25-cv-01886), it unleashes RICO thunder (18 U.S.C. §1962), securities sleight (15 U.S.C. §77q(a)), fiduciary fouls, enrichment larceny, and straight fraud – branding BIG’s Tinian "resort" a deliberate scam, a CCP catspaw fleecing marks while gnawing U.S. flanks.
Wei’s saga kicks off in 2015: Slick seminars, glossy folios, VR jaunts hawking a Titanic-twin colossus – 300 suites, 385k sq ft casino hive, ferry pier for Guam whales, eateries, halls, 936 "jobs" for green-card grease. USCIS rubber-stamps in nine days flat – red flag in a backlog swamp. By May 2022, yank: Conditional cards revoked for 130 souls on audit arsenic and snitch whispers exposing the vapor. What bloomed? A gutted warehouse reborn as Diamond Hotel & Casino: six tables (baccarat trio, blackjack duo, roulette singleton), 80 slots, soft-open April 2024, belly-up by Yuletide – zero yields, dreams dust.
The rogue roster? BIG and ANMRC as fronts; shells like BVI’s Canbo International, Beijing’s Canbo Geli and Jiabao Zhouli consults, Geli Law – Ponzi pipes draining to private pots. Masterminds: Erik Wang (Xianjun Meng/Jacky), Silvia Siu (Xiao Bing), James Huang (Jin) – aliases for dodging dicks, sluicing millions to HK high-rollers, luxe pads, jet sets. Locals? Mendiola-Long and Rudy Pamintuan, pocketing kickbacks for rubber-stamp nods. PERI’s shadow probe fits like a glove: Unfettered trusts veil NPL plagues, solvency sieves – BIG’s hype hid the hemorrhage.
This ain’t bean-counting; it’s hybrid haymaker, per CSBA’s chain-tightener. Tinian’s 2016 CPA harbor lease plants CCP periscopes yards from DoD ranges – sabotage bait. FinCEN’s CMLN alert knots it to cartels, but here? Dual-duty rinse: Bucks for beds, embeds for eyes, mules from campuses, fakes from ICE’s passport pokes. Mahnken’s Hill yarn warns: CCP’s top-down tech theft mirrors this – openness our Achilles, their hierarchy our hemlock. CSIS pegs Marianas as Oceania’s flashpoint; BIG’s burrow advances it.
Relief? Full payback, RICO triples, asset freezes, ops shutdowns. Echoes in a September 2025 NY Supremes class-action by 23 Beijing birds for $13.4 mil. Judge Furman helms; no trial yet, but portents: 2023 FBI Tinian raid nets 189 Chinese overstays – trafficking tang. Precedent? 2015’s $75 mil FinCEN whack on Dynasty Casino for AML sins. America First lens: CCP war by wallet, gutting First Chain readiness (CSBA/FDD dockets). UFO’s hush on CW-1 hellholes – squalor for Pinoys, per Migrant Center logs – tags ‘em enablers, flooding fronts to fray control, ripe for United Front jabs.
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Procedure’s sharp: Diversity hook (28 U.S.C. §1332) via global sprawl, EB-5 fed ties.
Scribe? Preston Postlethwaite, fraud-buster with a nose for nests. Cites EO 14157 (Jan 20, 2025): Cartels as FTOs/SDGTs, snaring CMLN pups. Heritage hollers: Shore up territories ‘gainst Beijing’s bite, or kiss the Pacific to the politburo. This caper? Strategic shank – justice now, or bleed slow.
Chapter 3: The Usual Suspects – Rogues, Puppets, and Island Judases
In this fetid fraud – sovereignty’s slow bleed dressed as development – lurks a gallery of ghouls: CCP cutouts, offshore spooks, CNMI Quislings fattening on our blindness. Unmasked in Wei’s writ, amplified by Marianas Variety, Offshore Alert, Saipan Tribune, Pacific Times, Justia dockets, GAO grills – they vacuumed $67.8 mil, planted red roots near DoD dirt. United Front filigree: Espionage embroidery on labor’s loom, pols’ purse. Debar ‘em, nail ‘em – safeguard the bastion.
Top dog: Erik Fangshen Wang (Xianjun Meng/Jacky Meng), HK-Yank dual with BIG’s reins, alias artist evading the heat (Feb ‘25 SDNY). Hong Kong haze roots, slick testimonial lauding Pacific Rim’s casino shell-up (May ‘22) – smokescreen for siphoning EB-5 elixir to empires and shells. PERI’s shadow specter: Trusts as thief-veils for embezzle and busts. HK residency? CMLN crossroads, per FinCEN ‘25 – alleged Beijing briefs for "expedite" lures. BIG birth ‘15 (Variety): "Rare USCIS zip" bait for green-card geese, funneled via BVI Canbo – tax tomb flagged by Transparency International.
The rest? A Babel of Beijing brokers: Siu and Huang, jet-set joes juicing lavishes; Pamintuan and Mendiola-Long, local lures oiling regs with graft grease. ANMRC? Conduit kingpin. Broader web: UFO’s worker waves as divide’s dynamite, Tan’s dependencies as debt’s drag. Mahnken’s metrics: Asymmetry’s the ace – our markets invite, theirs infest.
Chapter 4: The Deepening Web – Espionage and Economic Stranglehold
The Tinian scam’s tentacles stretch beyond mere cash grabs, weaving a tapestry of espionage and economic chokeholds that threaten the CNMI’s strategic pulse. Mahnken’s testimony paints a chilling picture: CCP’s state-directed tech theft mirrors this financial infiltration, leveraging U.S. openness to embed agents and erode alliances. The 2016 CPA harbor lease, a mere stone’s throw from DoD ranges, isn’t just real estate – it’s a listening post, a potential saboteur’s dream. FinCEN’s CMLNs, with their cartel ties, amplify this: laundering EB-5 proceeds funds not just lifestyles but strategic footholds, recruiting diaspora mules with fake IDs to blur the lines between commerce and covert ops.
The UFO’s role deepens the mire. Ostensibly a Filipino advocate, it’s become a human-trafficking pipeline for CW-1 workers – cheap labor propping up CCP fronts, diluting Indigenous American and FSM / COFA voices, and fostering dependencies that align with Beijing’s divide-and-conquer playbook. North’s studies on labor exploitation, from Sloan-Ford grants to congressional briefs, underscore this: a once-pristine outpost now a conduit for red influence. CSBA’s Indo-Pacific analysis warns that such vulnerabilities could turn Tinian into a liability, undermining AUKUS defenses and leaving Guam exposed.
Chapter 5: The Call to Arms – Reclaiming the Outpost
America First patriots must rouse. The CNMI’s plight – a post-WWII complacency yielding to CCP opportunism – demands a surgical strike. DoD-led reclamation, dismantling UFO networks, and fortifying defenses are non-negotiable. The Heritage Foundation’s call to counter Beijing’s predation echoes here: without action, the Western Hemisphere risks a red dawn. This isn’t just a financial fight; it’s a war for sovereignty, waged in the fog-shrouded alleys of our Pacific frontier.
Make Sure to Check Out Our Other Articles On CNMI CORRUPTION:
(1) https://www.cnmiga.org/post/the-cnmi-visa-crisis-protecting-american-workers-and-national-security
About the Author
Zaji “Persona Non Grata” Zajradhara is a staunch advocate for American workers and indigenous rights in the CNMI. Labeled a “persona non grata” by the CNMI government for his relentless pursuit of justice and his outspoken criticism of corruption and foreign influence, Zajradhara has become a symbol of resistance against the forces seeking to undermine American sovereignty in the islands.
As An Unemployed Afro-American resident and father, Zajradhara's firsthand experience with the CNMI’s dysfunctional labor market, its rigged political system, and the exploitation of vulnerable communities has fueled his activism. He has filed numerous legal claims against companies, including Tan Holdings, for violating labor laws and discriminating against American workers.
His unwavering commitment to exposing the truth, challenging the status quo, and demanding accountability has made him a thorn in the side of the CNMI establishment and a target of their efforts to silence him. However, Zajradhara remains undeterred, determined to fight for the rights of American workers and to protect the CNMI from the grip of foreign influence.
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