A Chinese national has been extradited from Guatemala to the United States to face drug trafficking-related charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced on Feb. 3.
Xu Wenshen was arrested in Guatemala City on July 17, 2025, at the request of the United States and extradited to the United States on Jan. 30.
He faces an indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he is charged with conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, laundering drug-trafficking proceeds, and providing material support to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), which the U.S. State Department designated a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025.
Prosecutors said that Xu and his co-conspirators operated a money laundering scheme that moved narcotics proceeds for transnational criminal organizations, relying on covert methods such as “mirror-transfers, encrypted communications applications, a serial-number verification system, and trade-based money laundering.”
The scheme lasted from at least November 2023 until his arrest in Guatemala City, according to prosecutors.
Xu also allegedly conspired with individuals in the United States, Colombia, and elsewhere to smuggle “multi-kilogram loads of cocaine” into the United States, according to the statement.
Prosecutors said that on the day of his arrest, Xu and others allegedly agreed to facilitate a cocaine shipment from Cali, Colombia, on behalf of an individual claiming ties to the CJNG.
If convicted, Xu could be sentenced from a minimum of 10 years to life imprisonment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Guatemala’s public ministry said in a July 17, 2025, statement announcing Xu’s arrest that he went by several names—including “Alex,” “Alex Xiu,” “Alex Tsui,” and “Chino”—and had alleged co-conspirators in China.
The Epoch Times contacted Xu’s lawyer for comment but didn’t receive a response by publication time.
Several other cases in recent years have involved Chinese nationals working with Mexican drug cartels.
In April 2025, a Georgia man was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for his role in a scheme to launder millions of dollars in illicit drug proceeds for Mexican cartels.
In December 2024, a federal judge in Illinois sentenced a Chinese national to 10 years behind bars for laundering $62 million in illegal narcotics proceeds on behalf of Mexican drug traffickers.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a financial trend analysis on Chinese money laundering networks’ activities in the United States in August 2025.
According to the analysis, U.S. financial institutions filed 137,153 suspicious activity reports linked to Chinese money-laundering networks between January 2020 and December 2024 involving approximately $312 billion in suspicious transactions. That amount included about $33 billion in large cash deposits connected to U.S.-based Chinese nationals with no verifiable income and about $9.7 billion in trade-based money laundering schemes.
In the same month, FinCEN issued an advisory asking banks to be on the lookout for Mexican cartels using Chinese money laundering networks. The advisory lists many “red flags,” including Chinese nationals’ accounts being used to move funds with no legitimate business or personal purpose.
“Chinese money laundering networks are global and pervasive, and they must be dismantled,” FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki said in a statement at the time. “These networks launder proceeds for Mexico-based drug cartels and are involved in other significant, underground money movement schemes within the United States and around the world.
“FinCEN’s Advisory and Financial Trend Analysis support Treasury’s continuing efforts, alongside our law enforcement and international partners, to bankrupt transnational criminal organizations and their enablers.”
