Two more Chinese nationals admit to taking photos at Key West Navy bases

Two Chinese students have pleaded guilty in federal court to entering a Key West Navy base in January to take photographs of defense installations.

Jielun Zhang and Yuhao Wang, both 24 and recently students at the University of Michigan admitted to one misdemeanor charge in order to avoid trial, which had been set for Monday.

Each faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison, one year of supervised release and a fine of up to $100,000.

The two had cellphones that had cameras, and Zhang had a Nikon digital camera when Navy security caught up with them on Sigsbee Park Annex on Jan. 4.

“Wang and Zhang each took photographs of military and naval infrastructure,” according to the documents attached to their guilty pleas.

Zhang’s Nikon had a photo file that contained images of Sigsbee Park Annex and the Trumbo Point Annex, which is in downtown Key West.

Their twin guilty pleas came two weeks after Lyuyou Liao, 27, pleaded guilty to the same charge after police caught him having entered the Navy’s Truman Annex in downtown Key West on Dec. 26, 2019.

Sentencing hearings for Wang, Zhang and Liao are all set for May 11 before Chief Judge K. Michael Moore at the U.S. District Court in Key West.

Since 2018, four Chinese nationals have been caught taking photos of Navy bases in Key West after sneaking onto the restricted property.

Wang and Zhang chose Sigsbee Park Annex, which is on an island called Dredgers Key and is a residential neighborhood for about 500 families, both military and civilian.

Sigsbee has a public charter school on its base, where the entrance is off North Roosevelt Boulevard in New Town, between a resort and a hotel.

After hearing from federal prosecutors that Wang and Zhang simply drove past the guard at the Sigsbee gate in a rented Hyundai Jan. 4, and spent nearly a half hour on the property, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Lurana Snow declared the Navy’s security practices “foolish” and lax.

“It boggles the mind,” Snow said from the bench.

Liao got onto the Truman Annex base by walking around a perimeter fence and along some rocks in the seawater.

The guard at the Sigsbee entrance is not allowed to leave the post and the other security guard was on another call at the time the students drove onto the base, prosecutors said.

Wang and Zhang did stop at the gate Jan. 4, and when asked for military identification they said they had none, police said. The guard told them to make a U-turn, but instead they proceeded onto Sigsbee.

The fourth Chinese national arrested at the Naval Air Station in Key West was Zhao Qianli in September 2018. Qianli claimed to be a music student from China and was caught by Key West police for trespassing onto the high-security Naval Air Station.

Judge Moore gave Qianli, 21, one year in prison.

Qianli entered the Truman Annex property by walking past the fence that ends on a beach. That property is also home to the Joint Interagency Task Force South, which conducts missions to stop illicit trafficking.

Investigators found photos and videos on Qianli’s cellphone as well as on his digital camera that he had taken of government buildings and a Defense Department antenna field on the military base.

Key West is home to seven Navy locations, or annexes, which have a combined shoreline of 27 miles.

Gwen Filosa

Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa covers Key West and the Lower Florida Keys for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald and lives in Key West. She was part of the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune that in 2005 won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Indiana University.