UPDATED 23:12 EDT / APRIL 02 2019

SECURITY

Taiwanese woman arrested after trying to hack a Trump resort

A Taiwanese woman has been arrested after illegally attempting to enter the Mar-a-Lago Resort owned by U.S. President Donald Trump with a USB stick infected by malware.

Some reports suggested that the woman, Yujing Zhang, was simply “Chinese,” but she was caught with two passports identifying her as from the Republic of China, better known in the west as Taiwan.

Miss Zhang, 32, was first intercepted by a Secret Service agent at a checkpoint outside the Palm Beach Club at Mar-a-Lago early Saturday afternoon, March 30. Zhang told the agent that she was the daughter of a member and was then allowed through on the word of a club manager.

After gaining access, Zhang was then intercepted again after telling a front-desk receptionist she was there to attend the United Nations Chinese-American Association event scheduled for that evening. There was no event scheduled at Mar-a-Lago that evening.

According to the South China Morning Post, Agent Samuel Ivanovich wrote in court documents that Zhang told him she was there for the Chinese-American event and had come early to familiarize herself with the club and take photos, contradicting what she had said at the checkpoint.

“After undergoing screening at the second Secret Service checkpoint the individual, per club protocol, was immediately met by club reception,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “The Mar-a-Lago reception staff then determined that the individual should not have been authorized access by their staff and Secret Service agents took immediate action resulting in the arrest of the individual.”

Complicating what already reads like a poorly written spy story, Zhang is said to have been carrying four cellphones, a laptop computer, an external hard drive and a thumb drive containing computer malware.

Suffice it to say, if she was a spy, she wasn’t very good at it. Zhang has not been charged with spying but with lying to federal agents.

Despite the fact Zhang is from Taiwan, not mainland China, the New York Times claimed that there are ongoing issues with “Chinese nationals” trying to access President Trump.

“The issue of access to Mr. Trump by Chinese nationals became an issue last month, when news media reports surfaced showing that a Chinese-American woman in Florida who once owned a chain of Asian massage parlors that had been investigated for prostitution had attended a number of events there, and had been photographed there with the president and other officials,” the Times wrote.

Photo: whitehouse/Flickr

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