In July 2021, six Nanjing salted ducks, cooked by a Chinese consulate official’s private chef, were delivered to the home of the parents of a senior aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. About four months later, six more ducks arrived. Four months after that, more salted ducks arrived. Eight months later: more salted ducks.

Prosecutors said the poultry shipments, described in a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday, were just one of several attempts to sendAssistant Sun WenThe 65-page indictment also describes travel benefits, event tickets and advertising for a Queens-based trucking company owned by a close friend of hers.

Prosecutors said Sun blocked Taiwanese officials from the governor’s office, removed references to Taiwan from state communications and prevented Taiwanese officials from meeting with state leaders, including Hochul. Prosecutors said she also ensured state officials did not speak publicly about China’s persecution of the Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people who have lived in a region that is now China for more than a thousand years.

Sun Wen, 40, was indicted on Tuesday on 10 criminal counts, including visa fraud, money laundering and other crimes. Her husband, businessman Hu Xiao, 41, was charged in the indictment with money laundering.

Both men pleaded not guilty in federal court and were released on bail and required to surrender their passports.

Sun Wen’s attorney, Jarrod Schaeffer, said Sun Wen looked forward to testifying in court about the indictment. “The presentation of these charges is understandably troubling to our client,” Schaeffer said.

If true, the allegations would represent a brazen manipulation of the highest levels of New York state government, involving years in office by Hochul, a fellow Democrat, and his predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.

Hochul’s press secretary, Avi Small, said Sun Wen was “hired by the governor’s office more than a decade ago” and that Hochul administration officials “immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and assisted law enforcement throughout the process.”

He said the government “terminated her employment in March 2023 after finding evidence of misconduct.”

The charges are the latest effort by the Justice Department — particularly driven in recent years by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn — to thwart Chinese government efforts to secretly exert influence across the United States.

Last month, a federal court in Brooklyn sentenced 75-year-oldWang Shujun, a Queens resident and self-proclaimed democracy activist and scholarConvicted of spying for China. Last summer, prosecutors won a lawsuit in the same court against three men who stalked a New Jersey family on behalf of the Chinese government. In a separate case, two men were accused of running a secret police station for China in a building in Lower Manhattan.

The prosecutors’ move comes as rising tensions between the United States and China over war, trade and technology have hurt diplomatic relations. China’s claims to parts of the South China Sea and the island of Taiwan are hotly disputed and at the heart of Tuesday’s charges against Sun Wen.

After a series of state government posts, Ms. Sun served as Ms. Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, where she used her influence to steer state officials away from actions that could suggest support for Taiwan, the island that the People’s Republic of China has claimed since the Kuomintang established its own government after the civil war ended in 1949.

“Please do not hold the meeting,” she wrote to a state legislator who invited the governor to meet with the director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office. “Please decline. Do not wish to involve her in sensitive China/Taiwan issues.”

Prosecutors also accused Sun of providing unauthorized invitations from the governor’s office to make it easier for Chinese government officials to travel to the United States and meet with state officials in New York.

She even arranged for Chinese government officials to receive official proclamations, formally framed documents bearing the state seal and the governor’s signature, without proper authorization. Although these declarations carry little practical significance, some foreign officials hold them in high esteem.

In 2019, then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen stopped in New York during her visit to the United States. The Chinese government opposed Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to the United States and even asked the US government not to allow her to visit the United States.

Prosecutors said Taiwanese officials invited Sun and Cuomo to the dinner. However, Sun never forwarded the invitation and instead told Taiwanese officials that Cuomo was hosting a day for staff in the Catskills.

“I stopped it,” Sun Wen said in a letter to a Chinese government official.

According to prosecutors, on the day of the banquet, Sun Wen joined leaders of local Chinese communities to protest against Tsai Ing-wen in Manhattan.

Prosecutors said that in 2021, Sun Wen allowed a Chinese government official to “influence” the content of Hochul’s public statements and ensure that she “did not speak publicly about the detention of Uyghurs in state-run concentration camps in Xinjiang, the People’s Republic of China.”

According to the indictment, the benefits Sun Wen received included: assistance in millions of dollars of transactions for Chinese companies related to Hu Xiao; travel benefits; tickets to events such as performances by the Chinese National Orchestra at Carnegie Hall; promotion of the Queens freight business; and employment opportunities in China for Sun Wen’s cousin.

Prosecutors said Sun Wen and Hu Xiao laundered the money to buy their $3.6 million five-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac in Manhasset on Long Island’s North Shore; a $1.9 million condo in Honolulu; and luxury cars, including a 2024 Ferrari.

Six weeks ago, FBI agents descended on this Manhasset alley in the early morning and searched the couple’s house.

The indictment alleges that Sun Wen failed to disclose to New York authorities the benefits she received from the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party as required by law. The Chinese Embassy could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Sun has worked in state government for nearly 14 years in a variety of positions, according to her LinkedIn profile. She started in the legislative branch as chief of staff to Sen. Grace Meng, now a member of Congress. Sun then held various positions in the Cuomo and Hochul administrations, according to her LinkedIn profile.

New York Senate Republican leader Robert Ott said on Tuesday that hiring Sun was “a stunning security blunder” and called for an investigation to determine who was responsible.

Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, said Sun had held only a minor position. “While Sun was promoted to deputy chief of staff in later administrations, during our tenure she worked at a handful of agencies and was one of many community liaisons with whom the governor had little interaction,” he said.

Sun, whose work focused on business development, Asian American affairs, and diversity, equity and inclusion, left Hochul’s governor’s office about 15 months later and took a position at the New York State Department of Labor in November 2022. Five months later, she left the Labor Department to serve as campaign manager for Democrat Stephen Cheng in his unsuccessful bid for a Long Island congressional seat.

The indictment alleges that after being fired by the Labor Department in March 2023, Sun continued to participate in public and professional Asian community events and falsely represented herself as the deputy secretary of the Labor Department. Sun apparently stopped doing so only after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Labor Department in August.

Sun Wen’s husband, Hu Xiao, runs a liquor store called Leivine Wine & Spirits in Flushing, Queens. He has also founded several other businesses over the past decade, including a company called American Medical Supplies, which he created at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. He also created two other companies, Golden Capital Group in 2016 and LCA Holdings in 2023, the nature of which is unclear.

Outside the Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday, lawyers for Sun Wen and Hu Xiao told a group of reporters they were confident in the strength of their defense.

“Some of the allegations in the indictment are, frankly, inflammatory and incomprehensible,” said Seth Ducharme, Hu’s attorney.

At the hearing, prosecutors described what they called a complex array of evidence, much of it written in Chinese. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Solomon said the couple “operated a large number of shell entities” including “over 80 different accounts.”

“This is not your average financial fraud,” Solomon said.