Frances Robles, Michael Forsythe and Alexandra Stevenson

<h1>A contribution of $2,700 toward the president’s re-election would get you in the door. Two seats for dinner were on offer for $25,000. And there was a third option: for $50,000, dinner for two and a photo with Trump.</h1>

Cindy Yang was determined to get the photo.

But there was a hurdle. The invitation limited campaign contributions to $5,400 per person, so Yang, a Chinese immigrant who had set up a string of day spas in Florida and was active in groups backed by the Chinese government and Communist Party, needed others to chip in.

Over the weeks leading up to the event, at least nine people in Yang’s orbit, some of them with modest incomes, made donations at exactly $5,400. She ended up at the dinner.

Yang was little known outside southern Florida until her name became associated with the arrest last month of Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, in a prostitution sting at a Jupiter massage parlor. The Miami Herald first reported that she had previously owned that parlor.

Though she was not charged or implicated in the sting, her other business efforts have since come under public scrutiny. One promised rich Chinese clients access to the social scene around Trump — and was promoted online with pictures of Cabinet members, the Trump family and even the president himself.

One of the $5,400 political donations came from a 25-year-old woman who gives facials at a beauty school, in a strip mall in nearby Palm Beach Gardens that is owned by Yang’s family. Another $5,400 came from a woman who says she worked as a receptionist at a massage parlor owned by Yang’s husband. A third gift of $5,400 came from an associate of Yang’s who had been charged in 2014 after a prostitution sting with practicing health care without a license, police records show.

The receptionist, Bingbing Peranio, listed as a “manager” on her disclosure, spoke with a reporter about her relationship with Yang. She described herself as a big fan of Trump’s and said Yang, a registered Republican, was seen as a leader among Asian-American Republicans in Florida.

Peranio said Yang had come to the spa where she worked at the time and helped fill out the check toward the president’s campaign. “I can’t say she was pushing me or not pushing me, but I worked there then,” she said, speaking at her home in Jupiter. “I was working there. I didn’t say no.”

Asked if Yang had reimbursed her for the $5,400, Peranio said, “I do not want to answer that question.” Reimbursing someone for a political contribution or contributing in the name of another person is illegal.

The other contributors declined to be interviewed or did not respond to requests for comment.

It is rare for workers in the massage and spa business to support candidates for office at such high-dollar levels, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records. In 2017 and 2018, of the nearly 65,000 donations made by people listed as massage therapists on FEC disclosures, only two gave the maximum $5,400, including one of the Trump donors connected to Yang.

Yang, contacted by The New York Times, declined to discuss the contributions or her attendance at the Mar-a-Lago event. Her lawyer, Evan W. Turk, did not respond to questions about the donations but said in a statement to the media Thursday that “the evidence indicates that our client has been falsely accused,” without providing further detail.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee denied “any wrongdoing on behalf of the RNC or Trump campaign.”

“We only accept donations in accordance with the law,” the spokesman said in a statement. “If we do see any evidence of illegal contributions, we report it to the proper authorities. If we were notified by the authorities that a donation were illegal, we would return the money.”

In addition to the spa workers, the federal records show three relatives of Yang — including her husband and her mother — and two business associates who donated $5,400. In total, the donations from Yang and the others came to at least $54,000.

Yang got her photo with the president, which she received in the mail signed by Trump in silver ink. She posted it to Facebook on March 22 and to her company’s website, which has since been taken down.

Friends and associates of Yang — who left China’s frigid northeast two decades ago and has also gone by Yang Li and Yang Lijuan — said she had spent a lifetime chasing opportunities.

Yang, 45, conducted interviews with businesspeople for a Chinese-language channel in Silicon Valley. She dealt antiques and promoted artists. She sold medical equipment. She founded a club that promotes a figure-hugging Chinese silk dress. And she built the chain of massage parlors and day spas in Florida, including the Orchids of Asia Day Spa &amp; Massage, where Kraft and several other wealthy men were accused of soliciting sex after it changed ownership. Kraft has pleaded not guilty.

“When we talked about a situation, she was able to see a business opportunity where we couldn’t,” said Lu Fang, who has known Yang for more than a decade and was a member of the dress club but was not among the Trump donors. “She knows how to seize an opportunity, and I still admire her.”

Yang discovered politics in 2015, and she quickly became a fundraiser for Republican candidates and causes, embracing the lifestyle it demanded, too, according to Lu and two other acquaintances of Yang who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

She attended social events at firing ranges and extolled the virtues of the Second Amendment, according to photographs posted to her Chinese-language WeChat account. “The biggest advantage of learning to use a gun is to make yourself stronger and feel strong support,” she wrote on the social media site.

She stumped for a stream of politicians and posed for pictures with Republican personalities, including Sarah Palin. In 2015, she was photographed with a small group holding a banner at the launch of Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. She also helped build a political organization and fundraising committee, the National Association of Asian American Republicans.

The election of Trump brought new opportunities as the line between business and politics became especially blurred.

Yang, who attended the inauguration, started a company — GY US Investments — that promised Chinese businesspeople access to American politicians, including Trump. Clients were offered entry to events, including White House visits, “VIP activities at Mar-a-Lago” and Warren Buffett’s annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

Sun Ye, an actress in Beijing, was among those who appeared in photographs on Yang’s website. Sun said she wanted to travel to the United States to burnish her image in China and abroad. She said she took a deluxe tour last year that included visits to Harvard, the Nasdaq marketplace and the White House. For part of the trip, she said, she stayed with Yang.

The highlight, she said, was to be in a photo with the president at a New Year’s party at Mar-a-Lago, one of the events promoted on Yang’s website.

Trump, however, skipped the party and stayed in Washington because of a government shutdown. Sun settled for a photo with his son Donald Jr.

“I wanted to see the president of the United States, and although I didn’t meet him, I met his family,” Sun said in an interview in Beijing. “It made me feel like I achieved my dream.”

In the past few years, Yang also began forging ties with organizations connected to the Chinese Communist Party and the government in Beijing.

In 2016, she joined the Florida Association for China Unification, part of a global network of organizations aimed at promoting the return of Taiwan to mainland control, a connection first reported by Mother Jones. Such groups fall under the oversight of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which seeks to enlist the vast ethnic Chinese diaspora to promote Beijing’s policies.

Li Qiangmin, the Chinese consul general in Houston, attended the Florida group’s opening ceremony, timed just before Taiwan’s president made a stopover in Miami. Yang served as a vice president of the association, according to a former officer in the group who asked to remain anonymous.

The group’s founding president, Qu Xianqin, sat next to the consul general and seems to be active in politics. She was at Jeb Bush’s campaign launch in 2015 as well, and appeared on a list of Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders endorsing President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012.

Yang also joined the Florida branch of the China Association for Science and Technology, a nongovernmental organization affiliated with China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, according to James Mulvenon, an expert on China’s intelligence capabilities.

“It is an organization explicitly designed to facilitate cooperation with the Chinese government,” Mulvenon said.

Yang’s mother, Zhang Guiying, told The Herald, which first reported Yang’s appearances at Mar-a-Lago, that there was a simple explanation for her daughter’s frenzy of political activity: “She likes to show off.” Reached outside her home in Wellington, Florida, Zhang declined to comment to The Times.

It is unclear how much financial success Yang’s endeavors have yielded. Her art-promotion company, Fufu International, which is listed under her mother’s name, filed for bankruptcy last year with more than $150,000 in credit card debt.

On Wednesday, typed notes were taped to the doors of her beauty school asking anyone to refrain from contacting her family and friends. One of the donors to Trump’s re-election effort with connections to Yang was seated at the reception desk at a nail salon next door to the beauty school.

The contribution from the woman was among the 231 donations in 2017 and 2018 that listed the word “facial” in the occupation description for the FEC. And it was the only one at the maximum $5,400.

“Since I am friends with Cindy, you need to contact that person,” said the woman, Katrina Eggertsson, referring to Turk, the lawyer who signed the note on the doors.

Gong Haizhen, the friend who was arrested in 2014, confirmed by phone that she had made the $5,400 donation but then hung up. (Court records show the charge against her was dismissed after she participated in an intervention program.)

Another of the donors, a massage therapist named Yang Yi, lives north of Miami and is linked to a home in a gated community that is listed in public records as belonging to Cindy Yang. It is unclear if they are related.

In a statement Thursday, Turk said his client’s reputation had been destroyed. “Cindy Yang seems to be another casualty, as a supporter of our president,” he said.

It is a sentiment echoed by Lu, her friend of a decade, who wondered why Yang had involved herself in politics.

“She’s facing a lot of pressure,” she said. “Things can’t be easy for her. Perhaps it’s fate.”

Big Donations, High Ambition and Massages

JUPITER, Fla. — The Republican National Committee promised an “evening reception with Donald J. Trump” last March at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Big donations, high ambition and massages

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Frances Robles, Michael Forsythe and Alexandra Stevenson

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Big donations, high ambition and massages