REVEALED: Chinese spa owners who hawked $150-a-bottle ‘miracle water’ cure also bribed UN diplomats in a ‘global grifting odyssey’ to try to start new Pacific tax haven in the Marshall Islands

The remarkable story of a Chinese couple who infiltrated the UN, bribed diplomats and almost created a futuristic tax haven on a Pacific island has been laid bare after they were finally arrested.

Cary Yan, 51, and Gina Zhou, 35, paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to United Nations diplomats in the Marshall Islands as part of a ploy to turn one of them into a ‘digital special administrative region’.

The couple planned to create a modernized version of a ‘Semi-Autonomous Region’ (SAR) – or tax haven – on the remote Rongelap Atoll, an island which has been uninhabited since the US used it for a nuclear test decades ago.

Yan and Zhou’s proposed zone would have been conveniently located just 200km of open water away from Kwajalein Atoll, where the US Army tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and tracks foreign rocket launches. 

They also envisaged a new city of artificial islands which would include an aviation logistics center, wellness resorts, a gaming and entertainment zone, and foreign embassies, per the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

OCCRP’s investigation said the plot was part of a wider ‘global grifting odyssey’ which began with a bizarre bottled water business in the San Francisco Bay area. 

The business sold $150 bottles of Chinese ‘miracle water’ which purported to have healing properties, and which they unlawfully tried to associate with NASA. 

A Chinese court found the business was a pyramid scheme which tricked 20,000 people into spending at least $18 million. 

The scheme also involved Yan’s brother based in China, who was jailed for seven years in 2020 for his part in the fraudulent enterprise. 

But Yan evaded Chinese jurors thanks to his move to Silicon Valley several years earlier, where he was marketing the ‘miracle water’ to a global audience. 

The liquid was sold under names including SSG Mineral Water and Genesis Life Raw Water, and the associated pyramid scheme tricked investors into thinking they could resell the water for a profit. 

Yan met Zhou in California, and in 2014 they opened a Santa Clara alternative medicine spa together called the Immortal Float Center.

The spa used the ‘miracle water’ in a relaxation tank called the ‘Immortal Digital Life Cube’ – essentially a large bath marketed as having healing powers using a combination of the water and spells.

Yan ramped up the marketing campaign for the Immortal Float Center by asking another Bay Area alternative medicine businessman to issue a report legitimizing the ‘healing properties’ of his ‘miracle water’.

His chosen businessman rented space at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, and Yan used this loose connection to claim his water was made at the same facility. 

But this is where his scheme began to unravel, as NASA officials told OCCRP they had no connection to the couple’s business and they did not have permission to use the name. 

Yan and Zhou’s next enterprise was even more brazen – as they plotted to win the trust of corrupt United Nations officials and use them to create a tax haven in the Marshall Islands. 

Home to around 40,000 people, the Marshall Islands are a sprawling chain of volcanic islands and coral atolls in the central Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and the Philippines. 

Prosecutors allege the couple paid several lawmakers on the archipelago bribes of up to $22,000 to vote in favor of passing a bill to create the SAR. 

They add that the pair wined and dined at least six island officials and lawmakers, paying for their flights and accommodation in New York and Hong Kong where they attended conferences promoting the SAR. 

One official even appointed Yan to the role of special adviser to the Marshall Islands, and the couple became citizens of the nation. 

They also wheedled their way into getting a photograph with the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to make them appear formally associated with the organization, by paying at least $150,000 to Ugandan diplomats, per OCCRP.

The couple then took control of a UN-accredited New York charity called World of Hope International, which supports educational programs in West Africa, by paying a Dominican Republic official a $1 million bribe. 

Their plan seemed to be working, as motions supporting their SAR idea were debated in the Marshall Islands parliament in 2018 and 2020, according to the court charge sheet. 

Parliament speaker Kenneth Kedi told OCCRP he supported their plan because he thought it had US backing. 

But he said ‘a big red flag’ emerged later in the form of the couple appearing to push a pro-China agenda. 

Yan and Zhou pitched the proposal as a means of cleaning up Rongelap Atoll, which was evacuated after being blighted by radioactive ash which spilled over from a hydrogen bomb the US dropped on nearby Bikini Atoll as a nuclear test in 1954. 

The bill was never passed, partly due to strong opposition from the island’s president at the time, Hilda Heine, who was suspicious of Chinese interference in her country’s legislation. 

She said the proposed zone would have been conveniently located just 200km of open water away from Kwajalein Atoll, where the US Army tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and tracks foreign rocket launches.  

Heine lost her bid for re-election in 2019, and a new parliament in 2020 renewed efforts to pass the bill. 

But later that year, Yan and Zhao were arrested by American enforcement officials in Thailand and extradited to the US on foreign corruption, money laundering and bribery charges.

They pleaded guilty to one count each of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and Yan was sentenced to 42 months in prison, while Zhou was considered to have served her time while she was being held in custody.

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