A man accused of conducting cyberattacks on behalf of the Chinese government has been extradited to the United States and is now in federal custody in Houston, Texas. Xu Zewei arrived in the U.S. on Saturday, April 26, 2026, according to his Italian lawyer, Simona Candido, who confirmed the extradition to TechCrunch.
The U.S. Justice Department charged Xu last year with working as a contractor for China’s Ministry of State Security. Prosecutors allege he and co-conspirator Zhang Yu targeted U.S. universities in early 2020 to steal COVID-19 pandemic research. The two are also accused of hacking thousands of Microsoft Exchange email servers beginning in March 2021, as part of a campaign linked to the Chinese-backed hacking group known as Hafnium — later identified as Silk Typhoon.
Prosecutors say Hafnium targeted more than 60,000 entities in the United States and successfully compromised more than 12,700 of them. Victims included defense contractors, law firms, think tanks, and infectious disease researchers. Xu allegedly worked for Shanghai Powerock Network, a company prosecutors say conducted hacking operations for Beijing, with hackers reporting directly to Chinese state officials in Shanghai.
Xu was arrested in Italy last year at the request of U.S. authorities. He is currently held at the Federal Detention Center in Houston, consistent with records on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons website. His U.S. attorney, Dan Cogdell, was scheduled to appear at a hearing in Houston on Monday.
China’s Foreign Ministry opposed the extradition and accused the U.S. of fabricating the case, according to the Financial Times. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
The case marks a rare instance of a suspected Chinese government-linked hacker facing U.S. prosecution in person. In 2022, Yanjun Xu — no relation — became the first Chinese government intelligence officer extradited to the U.S., and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Source: TechCrunch