Canadian university student suspected of espionage

A Canadian university student is suspected of espionage and is in FBI custody, according to media reports Wednesday.

Chinese national Weiheng Zeng was arrested Aug. 23 after he crossed into the US at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario.

Zeng was in a Detroit courtroom Tuesday charged with making false statements, and he will remain in custody while waiting for his trial. No date was released.

Zeng, an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, was captured on video taking photos at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, CBC News reported.

FedEx courier employees saw a man climbing on a forklift while trying to open a locked truck and a shipping container in the airport parking lot.

Zeng said he was attempting to “get a better angle to take pictures.”

He was seen getting into a Chrysler minivan, and when he attempted to enter the US in August in the same vehicle, he told customs authorities he was on a one-day trip to Chicago.

A criminal complaint said that Zeng kept changing his story; he is charged with making false statements to authorities; and the Ontario resident eventually confessed that he was being paid by a “Chinese contact” to take photos of specific airplanes.

He was paid in Chinese yuan by way of a bank transfer and received a SIM card every few months, using his Huawei cell phone to take pictures and forward them to the Chinese contact. Zeng was instructed to destroy the SIM card and delete conversations.

The SIM card allowed him to avoid the Canadian cellular network and use the Chinese network to reach the contact.

He admitted that in 2025, he also took photographs inside a FedEx building at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Chinese embassies in Washington and Ottawa did not answer calls for comment, according to CBC News.