The Chinese-born divorcée who is charged with blackmailing Wall Street billionaire and Milwaukee Bucks owner Wesley Edens was bailed out of jail by a Chinese foreign agent — and has extensive ties to the country, bombshell court documents reveal.
Changli “Sophia” Luo, 46, who faces four counts over the alleged extortion scheme after she had sex with the 64-year-old Edens, was released on $500,000 bond, which was posted by Robin Mui — the CEO of a pro-Chinese Communist Party newspaper that operates in the US.
Documents show Mui stumped up $100,000 in cash to secure her release on house arrest.
Mui is a registered foreign agent who runs Sing Tao US, the New York City-based arm of a Chinese-owned media organization.
Campaign records show he also donated to the campaign of the disgraced Southern California Mayor Eileen Wang, who has admitted in court to being a Chinese asset.
Luo, who runs New York-based nonprofit One World Initiative Advocacy, is accused of sliding into Edens’ LinkedIn DMs, hooking up with him — and then threatening to share compromising videos and pictures of the financier, according to federal docs.
She has pleaded not guilty.
Reached at the lux Park Avenue pad where she’s under house arrest, Luo refused to talk, telling The Post, “No, get away.”
At one point, she demanded a $1.2 billion payout, half of his $2.5 billion fortune, prosecutors said.
During a Dec. 3 court hearing following her arrest, the government argued that she was a flight risk due to her significant ties to China.
She had recently transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts in China — including a large portion of the $1 million Edens gave her as part of a payoff agreement, which she allegedly later reneged on, the feds said.
Records show that she had more assets in the communist nation than she had in the US, and her father and other family members live there, prosecutors argued.
She was arrested after booking a flight from JFK International Airport to Hong Kong.
Her lawyer argued that she wasn’t a flight risk and noted that she is not a Chinese citizen and had surrendered her US passport.
He claimed that she was only trying to fly to Hong Kong to visit her sick father.
The government requested home detention with GPS monitoring and a significant bond.
Mui is a well-known pro-Chinese government power player. He registered Sing Tao News as a foreign agent of Hong Kong in 2021 after a demand by the US Justice Department.
The US arm of the company received millions from its parent organization in Hong Kong, a former British colony that is now entirely controlled by the CCP in Beijing.
The company denied it was acting as a foreign agent — claiming that it is a legitimate news outlet providing information to the Chinese expat community.
His company also donated to the campaign of a California mayor who has since admitted to being a Chinese agent, according to campaign finance records.
Eileen Wang, 58, resigned as mayor of Arcadia on Monday after pleading guilty to acting as an agent for the Chinese government.
The Chinese-born politician received a $3,300 donation from the Los Angeles-based arm of Sing Tao, Mui’s company, on Aug. 9, 2022, according to the campaign’s financial records.
However, Mui insisted that Wang’s campaign had made an error on its campaign finance forms and said he had never contributed to Wang’s campaign.
“[The] LA branch never made any political contribution — unless you prove to me otherwise,” Mui told the LA Times in May 2025 when news of the alleged donation came to light.
Wang now faces up to 10 years in prison for one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent, according to a federal plea agreement unsealed Monday.
Mui previously made headlines in 2024 when it was revealed that two of former New York Mayor Eric Adams’ top advisers had met with him.
That meeting, in spring 2022, came just months after Mui had registered as an agent for the Chinese government.
Mui did not disclose his meeting with Adams officials, raising potential legal concerns. Mui claimed it was his job to talk to
Mui’s involvement in the case raises questions about whether Luo could be involved in China’s attempt to run influence operations in the US, according to an expert from the respected conservative think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
“You have this ecosystem of Chinese language news outlets in the US, many of them get funding from Chinese sources, participate in Chinese government dialogues, and clearly have editorial agendas assigned by the Chinese government,” FDD Senior Fellow Emily de La Bruyere told The Post.
“Then you have non-profits that have as their mission something along the lines of ‘fostering Chinese-US cooperation’ or ‘globalization,’ and most of them do not disclose their funding, but in some cases, you can see they are funded by Chinese entities,” she added.
“It wouldn’t at all be crazy to imagine a scenario in which you have a China-tied Chinese language news outlet advancing Chinese influence efforts in the US, a China-tied non-profit advancing Chinese interest in the US, and a Chinese agent in political office, and all of these three interact, and their funding is commingled or coming from similar sources,” she said.
Mui did not respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday.
Attempts by The Post to speak with him at Sing Tao’s offices on Lafayette Street in Manhattan were also unsuccessful.
