‘Chinese intelligence agent’ bought half of private investigator Bo Dietl’s company

June 16, 2023

A year after Chinese officials opened a series of covert foreign police stations to spy on dissidents, they quietly registered a US branch of a government-controlled security company in Delaware that forged an important relationship with New York City’s most storied private investigator.

The secret police stations, including one in Lower Manhattan, were first revealed by The Post. Opened in 2014, they were the centerpiece of Operation Fox Hunt, an effort by President Xi Jinping to track down his Communist Party’s enemies abroad.

But now The Post can reveal another aspect of China’s presence in the United States: A suspected Communist intelligence agent went into business with Bo Dietl, the NYPD detective-turned-private investigator who also ran for New York mayor in 2017.

In November 2015, China Security and Protection Company Ltd. (CSP) announced on its Chinese-language website that it had acquired 50 percent of the equity of Beau Dietl & Associates, the leading private investigations firm founded by Richard “Bo” Dietl, 72.

Liu Wei and Bo Dietl in China — Bo Dietl poses with Liu Wei, chairman of China Security and Protection Company, which quietly bought 50 percent of Dietl’s firm in 2015. The two met when Dietl traveled to Beijing after the deal. Dietl told The Post that when he was there, he realized he was dealing with “Communists,” but it was not until 2019, he said, that he ended the arrangement.

Announcement of Bo Dietl's Beijing office — This was how Dietl announced the opening of his company’s office in Beijing — but he later deleted the post.

CSP’s chairman, Liu Wei, is an intelligence agent of the Chinese government, a source with knowledge told The Post.

CSP described the deal with Dietl as furthering the “Belt and Road” objectives of the Chinese government, its name for the Communists’ plan to become a global superpower through buying influence and building infrastructure.

The company has close Communist links. It worked security at the 2022 Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and 2021’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the party’s founding, and boasts of its commitment to the “Belt and Road” strategy.

Dietl himself visited China after signing the deal, and has bragged both about the deal and about doing surveillance on one of the Communist Party’s most high-profile targets, the Manhattan-based billionaire Miles Guo.

“We’re partnering with a Chinese investigating company, one of the largest in China, and we are operating an office there,” said Dietl in a January 2016 article in Leaders Magazine.

A press release from CSP which hailed its purchase of half of Dietl's eponymous company. — CSP hailed its purchase of half of Dietl’s company as a part of the “Belt and Road” strategy that China’s Communist leaders are using to assert global dominance.

A month later, Dietl, who was a regular commentator for Fox News and had starred in the Hollywood film “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2013, boasted of his company’s new partnership with CSP America on his Facebook page, announcing that BDA, the company Dietl founded as Beau Security & Investigations Inc. in 1985, was opening its first office in Beijing.

“I am proud to announce that my company, Beau Dietl & Associates, has opened an office in Beijing, China, in partnership with the only Chinese investigation firm that has access to Chinese governmental databases to perform investigations on individuals and corporations,” said the Feb. 16, 2016, post, which has since been taken down.

As a private investigator, Dietl enjoys access to more law enforcement information than a normal member of the public. However, he has also been accused of misusing it.

Noelle Dunphy, a consultant who is suing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani over alleged sex assault, says in her suit that Dietl provided Giuliani with the names of FBI agents who had questioned her in 2019. Giuliani denies the allegations.

Bo Dietl shakes hands with Liu Wei in New York — When it announced the deal, the Chinese company published a photograph of Liu, its chairman, in Dietl’s New York office. Sources with knowledge tell The Post that Liu is a Chinese intelligence agent.

Dietl did not disclose to federal regulators that China owned 50% of his company.

In 2017, Dietl’s company applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a license to operate radio equipment and answered “no” to a question about whether foreigners owned at least 25% of it.

Two years later, in 2019, he claimed to the New York state comptroller that he was the 100% owner of his company, according to a vendor questionnaire obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

And in 2021, the company received a $2 million PPP loan as part of the federal scheme to help companies through COVID, despite such loans being banned from going to companies with more than 20% Chinese ownership.

Dietl this year claimed to have cut connections with the Chinese, but his company, which had sales of $10 million in 2022, is still listed as a link on the CSP website.

An FCC document filed by Bo Dietl's company — In this Federal Communications Commission declaration in June 2017, Dietl’s company told the federal regulator that it had no foreign ownership — but CSP had bought 50 percent of the company two years earlier.

A New York City document showing that Dietl described CSP as owning at least 10% of his company in 2021. — In New York City filings, Dietl has acknowledged Chinese ownership, calling CSP the “owner” in two forms from 2019 and 2020, and in 2021 declaring in this document that CSP owned at least 10% of his company through the use of the code “EWN,” which indicates ownership under rules used by the city for approving vendors. He named no other owners.

Because his company is not publicly listed, the names of shareholders are not publicly disclosed. But in filings with the New York City Council in 2019 and 2020, Dietl disclosed that CSP was the “owner” of his company, and in 2021 said it owned at least 10% of Beau Dietl & Associates.

On Thursday, Dietl claimed to The Post that he had been initially naive about CSP’s Communist ties, and had ended his relationship with it in 2019 without having actually done any security work with it.

He told The Post that the Chinese executives had sought him out to do security work on shipping containers, promising him upward of $10 million in security contracts.

“They came to me, and wanted to invest in my company,” he said. “I realized they were Communists and they had me meeting with these Communist Chinese generals when I was in Beijing, China,” he said. Until that point, he said, “I didn’t know.”

However, he said it was not until 2019 that he ended his ties with the Chinese company. Dietl did not explain why it took three years to sever the relationship after learning that CSP was “Communists.”

CSP photo of a meeting in Beijing with Bo Dietl — This was how CSP China publicized Dietl coming to Beijing after the deal to buy 50% of his company. Dietl said this was when he realized they were Communists. He ended the relationship in 2019, he claimed.

He also did not address why he had both failed to tell federal and state authorities about the Chinese relationship, and why he had continued to tell New York City that CSP owned more than 10% of his company until 2021.

Dietl said, “They own nothing of my company. I paid them money and got rid of them before the pandemic. I do not do business with Communist China.”

However, when The Post told him CSP’s website still featured a link to his company, Dietl said he would contact his lawyer “immediately” to send a cease-and-desist letter to the Beijing-based firm.

Dietl’s business connections with China have raised eyebrows at a time when a flurry of indictments have been filed against US-based private detectives. Dietl is not one of those and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The prosecutions center on alleged assistance to China’s Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net, in which thousands of dissidents and Chinese nationals wanted by Chinese authorities have been forced back to the country.

“Since its launch in 2014 as part of [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, 10,000 are claimed to have been successfully returned from over 120 countries around the globe under Sky Net (and junior partner Fox Hunt) operations,” according to Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based think tank and human rights organization that has tracked abuses by Chinese security officials since 2009.

In the US, prosecutors allege that some private detectives have traded on federal law enforcement connections to obtain classified documents and private information on Chinese nationals living in the US who are seen as enemies by the Chinese Communist Party.

In the most advanced case, private investigator Michael McMahon, a retired NPYD sergeant, is on trial in Brooklyn federal court along with two other men, Congying Zheng and Yong Zhu, accused of acting as an unlawful agent of the People’s Republic of China, interstate stalking and conspiracy.

The trio are accused of working on behalf of the Chinese government to harass a New Jersey couple who were accused of stealing money in China. It’s the first such case to go to trial in a US courtroom, according to the Department of Justice. They have pleaded not guilty.

The relationship between Dietl’s company and CSP is documented in social media posts, company websites and public records beginning in 2015.

Dietl said this year that he targeted Miles Guo, a billionaire who is one of China’s most prominent dissidents and who lived in a Fifth Avenue apartment and the Sherry-Netherland hotel until his arrest by the FBI on fraud charges.

Liu founded CSP in China in 1994. The company bills itself as “a national comprehensive security company” engaged in security services, including rail transit and aviation, and conducts “business investigations” and security training “with its businesses expanded to overseas.”

Liu is a member of committees run by China’s Ministry of Public Security in Beijing, according to Chinese-language reports.

The company has branches in China, and has acquired security companies in Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan and Malaysia.

CSP’s US branch, CSP America Inc., was incorporated on June 30, 2015, in Delaware, public records show. The incorporation was completed by Howard Kleinhendler, a longtime lawyer for Dietl who was also a key adviser on Dietl’s 2017 failed campaign for New York City mayor. Kleinhandler was listed as CSP’s CEO between 2017 and 2020.

In February 2016, CSP posted bulletins to its Chinese-language website that it had acquired BDA, then in English on March 1 said it had acquired 50 percent of BDA’s equity.

Bo Dietl Hamptons home — Dietl bought a waterfront home in the Hamptons after his firm began working with a Chinese security firm.

At the end of that month, CSP’s website showed Dietl visiting China, saying it helped “both sides to further strengthen their win-win cooperation and expand the market confidence.”

Another photo shows Dietl with CSP chairman Liu and others around a conference table in front of a screen saying “China Security & Protection Co. Ltd welcomes Mr. Richard Bo Dietl.”

After the deal, Dietl bought a 1,700-square-foot waterfront home in the Town of Southampton for $1.5 million, public records show.

And Dietl began donating substantially to Republican federal candidates, including Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee. He donated more than $50,000 between 2016 and 2020.

Then in 2017, he launched a failed run for New York City mayor as an independent.

Dietl’s relationship with CSP’s chairman, Liu, appeared warm and friendly in photos published by CSP.

Additionally, the private investigator posed with a “representative of the Chinese government” and members of BDA’s staff at Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan in March 2018.

“Celebrating our Chinese partnership with a representative of the Chinese government in NYC this evening,” wrote Patrick Hurley in a March 20, 2018, Twitter post that has since been taken down. Hurley, a US Navy veteran, worked for Dietl’s company between 2016 and 2020.

Richard "Bo" Dietl and others around a table at Sparks Steak House — In 2018, Dietl (third from right) dined at Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan, with his own staff and who his colleague Patrick Hurley (right) said was a representative of the Chinese government.

In 2016, Hurley announced on Twitter that BDA had also established a partnership with China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, a state-owned company that operated as an arm of the People’s Liberation Army.

“This partnership is mutually beneficial giving each company tremendous added global capability,” Hurley tweeted in a post that has since been taken down.

In 2019, several of the civil engineering company’s subsidiaries were blacklisted by the World Bank for fraud and corruption.

Liu was also given a hearty welcome by other retired law enforcement linked to Dietl in the US. In March 2015, Liu received the “Distinguished Member Award” from the National Police Defense Foundation. One of its directors, Philip Scala, is a BDA senior investigator.

Liu Wei gets award in New Jersey — Before striking the deal, CSP chairman Liu Wei received an award from the National Police Defense Association, founded and run by retired federal agent Joe Occhipinti. One of Dietl’s investigators is a director of the charity.

The New Jersey-based charity provides legal and medical support to law enforcement. It praised Liu, saying he and the charity had worked together since 1999 “pursuing common interests which include the fight against international crime syndicates, international terrorism, and the plight of victims of human trafficking gangs.”

The only public disclosure of activity on behalf of Chinese companies Dietl made was when he boasted on WABC’s “Sid and Friends in the Morning” that he had surveilled the exiled Chinese businessman Miles Guo.

Guo, whose real name is Ho Won Kwok, was arrested by federal agents in March for his alleged involvement in a billion-dollar fraud scheme. Following his arrest, a fire mysteriously broke out at Guo’s palatial Fifth Avenue apartment.

After the arrest, Dietl told the show: “Few years back, I get a call from a Chinese company … ‘Bo, we want to hire you … we want you to put this Gum Yang guy, Guo, under surveillance.’

Bo Dietl with CSP chairman Liu Wei and — Dietl and CSP chairman Liu were joined in New York by Joe Occhipinti, a former federal agent, who co-founded the National Police Defense Foundation. It had earlier given Liu an award.

“He lives at the Sherry-Netherland and all this stuff. And we get hired. We’re a professional company, we get hired to do it. … I started doing a little background and I understood that he was someone that was talking against Communist China.”

Dietl told The Post that the surveillance of Guo was not done at the behest of CSP. He said he was hired by another Chinese security firm, but refused to name the company Thursday. “It was another company from China,” he said.

Calls and an email to CSP in Beijing were not returned this week.