A federal grand jury has charged 11 individuals in a marriage fraud conspiracy run by a Chinese transnational criminal organization that recruited U.S. Navy service members to enter sham marriages with Chinese nationals — granting them not just immigration benefits but physical access to American military installations.
The three-count indictment, unsealed in Jacksonville, Florida, lays out a scheme spanning from March 2024 to February 2025. Five suspects were arrested on Feb. 3 by Homeland Security Investigations and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Two more are scheduled to self-surrender. Six remain at large.
Four former Navy service members have already pleaded guilty in related cases. Their sentencing hearings are pending.
The operation worked like a pipeline. The criminal organization recruited U.S. citizens — preferably members of the armed forces, according to the indictment — to marry Chinese nationals in exchange for structured cash payments. The first installment came up front. A second followed when the foreign spouse obtained legal immigration status. A final payment arrived after the divorce. The marriages were transactional, start to finish.
But immigration fraud was only half the equation. Because military spouses receive identification cards granting access to U.S. installations, the scheme doubled as a backdoor onto American bases. That elevates this from garden-variety fraud to a direct national security threat, as Just The News reports.
The sham marriages took place across multiple states — New York, Connecticut, Nevada, and Florida — suggesting the network's reach extended well beyond a single jurisdiction.
The most detailed episode in the indictment reads like a federal case study in how brazen the operation had become.
In January 2025, a confidential source reported to law enforcement that Navy reservist Raymond Zumba had offered to bribe the source and the source's spouse — who worked in the personnel office issuing identification cards at Naval Air Station Jacksonville — in exchange for unauthorized Department of War ID cards.
Federal agents directed the source to continue communications with Zumba. On Feb. 13, 2025, Zumba drove from New York to Jacksonville with three co-defendants: Anny Chen, 54, of New York; Hailing Feng, 27, of New York; and Kin Man Cheok, 32, of China. After business hours, Zumba brought Chen and Cheok onto Naval Air Station Jacksonville and initiated the process for them to receive ID cards.
The next day — Valentine's Day — Zumba met with the confidential source and handed over $3,500 in exchange for two cards.
He was arrested on the spot. Both cards were recovered.
The indictment names five defendants:
Four former Navy members — Raymond Zumba, Brinio Urena, Morgan Chambers, and Jacinth Bailey — have pleaded guilty in related cases. The identities of the remaining defendants have not been publicly disclosed.
Each count of marriage fraud conspiracy and bribery conspiracy carries a maximum federal prison sentence of five years.
Marriage fraud schemes are not new. What distinguishes this case is the deliberate targeting of military personnel — not as incidental marks, but as the preferred vehicle for the operation. The indictment's language is telling: the organization sought U.S. citizens, "preferably members of the armed forces." That preference wasn't about romance. It was about what a military spouse ID card unlocks.
HSI Tampa acting Special Agent in Charge Michael Cochran framed the stakes clearly:
"This investigation underscores the critical role that HSI plays in protecting our nation from transnational criminal organizations that seek to exploit our customs and immigration laws and threaten our national security. Through the dedication and expertise of our agents and partners, we have successfully investigated, disrupted and dismantled a sophisticated criminal network operating across borders."
"Dismantled" may be the operative word — but six targets remain unaccounted for, and the network's full scope across four states suggests this indictment captures a slice of the operation, not necessarily its totality.
Every immigration enforcement story invites the same tired deflection: that these are victimless bureaucratic violations, paperwork crimes dressed up as threats. This case demolishes that narrative. Chinese nationals obtained physical access to a U.S. naval air station through fraudulent marriages brokered by a transnational criminal organization. Active-duty and reserve service members sold their status — and their country's security — for cash.
The men and women who serve honorably on bases like NAS Jacksonville deserve to know that the people walking through the gate beside them actually belong there. Four of their own peers betrayed that trust. The organization that recruited them exploited every seam in the system — immigration law, military spousal benefits, base access protocols — simultaneously.
This is what immigration enforcement actually looks like when agencies are empowered to do their jobs: a multijurisdictional takedown spanning HSI offices in Jacksonville, New York, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, coordinated with NCIS, culminating in arrests, guilty pleas, and an indictment that names the network for what it is.
Six suspects are still out there. The work isn't finished.
