An Orange County lawyer who represented Chinese birth tourism suspects was sentenced on Monday to 21 months in prison after helping Chinese nationals escape the United States after being designated material witnesses in the case.
Irvine-based immigration attorney Ken Zhiyi Liang has been arrested and charged with repeated witness tampering for assisting multiple material witnesses in fleeing the United States, in violation of orders in the March Chinese “maternity tourism” scandals.
Federal arrest warrants were issued for eleven Chinese nationals last week, targeting clients of so-called “maternity tourism” businesses who had fled back to China after being ordered to stay in the U.S. as material witnesses. None of the the owners of the three maternity tourism operations raided in early March have yet been charged for any crime, according to the Orange County Register.
Among the numerous allegations facing “maternity tourism” company You Win USA, targeted among other companies in a federal raid last week, is the accusation that the company defrauded a local Orange County hospital by failing to pay potential millions in fees, or paying
Pregnant women from China discovered in California “Chinese birthing houses” could likely still give birth in the U.S. during the course of a massive investigation into multiple “maternity tourism” schemes. “Birth tourism” operations bring pregnant women into the U.S. for the purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil, giving their babies U.S. citizenship.
Several of the customers identified in a “maternity tourism” scheme in California are employees of the Chinese government, including the provinces of Ningxia and Henan, according to court documents issued in the course of obtaining search warrants.
