On January 27, the federal court in the southern district of New York continued to hear the case involving Amarvel Biotech, a company from Hubei, China, accused of illegally shipping fentanyl precursor chemicals to the United States. One of the defendants, Chen Yiyi, a translator for the Chinese company, appeared in court to defend herself, providing detailed explanations of her role within the company and her related actions.
Chen Yiyi shared that she was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, and had obtained bachelor’s degrees in broadcast television directing and international trade from Huanggang Normal College. She further pursued a master’s degree in public and business communication in Italy. After graduating in 2017, she worked for a luxury import-export supply chain company in Shanghai, handling business with Italy. In 2018, she joined a leather factory in Italy, working for luxury brands from Italy and France.
At the end of 2019, at the request of her parents, she returned to Wuhan, where she was planning to go back to Italy after the Chinese New Year in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the city was locked down until the second half of 2020. Upon the lifting of the lockdown, her father invited her to help at his workplace, leading her to join Amarvel Biotech in Hubei. After a two-month sales trial, she transitioned to website setup and technical supervision within the company.
In mid-2022, the company established multiple website platforms for Amarvel Biotech, with the business manager expressing the desire to advertise on Google. Chen Yiyi set up the advertising account but faced challenges as the ads were suspended due to sensitive terms like “fentanyl,” violating Google’s policies. Despite three warnings from Google’s technical team to remove the offending terms and edit the ad content to comply, the account was temporarily suspended.
To resume advertising, the company hired personnel to address the Google advertising issue, filed an appeal with Google, and restarted advertising efforts, only to have the account suspended again shortly after. Evidence presented by the prosecution showed that multiple ad pages mentioned fentanyl-related precursor products and listed Chen Yiyi’s contact information.
For example, on June 5, 2023, the main website of Amarvel Biotech, amarvelbio.com, listed the fentanyl precursor 1-boc-4-AP2 as “in stock,” with the CAS registration number 125541-22-2. Chen Yiyi’s contact information was at the bottom of the product page.
During the hearings, Chen Yiyi testified that she attended two international conferences in March and June 2023, held in Bangkok, Thailand, and Fiji. According to her account, she primarily served as a translator because the business sales representative Yang Er (previously translated as Yang Two) was unable to attend due to pregnancy. She emphasized that she only temporarily replaced Yang Er for three months and was not responsible for price negotiations or product quality matters.
At the Bangkok conference, an undercover agent named Gil from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) explicitly expressed a desire to establish a laboratory to develop fentanyl products and discussed issues concerning chemical raw materials. Subsequently, they discussed plans to manufacture large quantities of finished fentanyl using chemicals. At the Fiji conference, they revisited discussions regarding orders for tons of fentanyl precursor chemicals.
During the Fiji conference, Chen Yiyi was arrested, and the contents of her phone and computer were used as evidence. The DEA found on her computer that she had read three articles in Chinese from Voice of America, titled “U.S. Plans to Sanction Fentanyl Traffickers,” “China Denies Smuggling Fentanyl to Mexico, Accusing the U.S. of Creating Problems,” and “Two Chinese Companies and Five Individuals Sanctioned by the U.S. for Alleged Fentanyl Smuggling.”
When questioned in court, Chen Yiyi was asked about her understanding of the fentanyl situation in the U.S. after reading these three articles in March during the Bangkok conference and in June during the Fiji conference in 2023. She replied, “After reading about the conflicting sources from both the U.S. and China, I was at a loss. The accusations from the U.S. and the counterclaims from China confused me, and I didn’t know what was happening.”
The prosecution presented multiple pieces of evidence, including the prohibited terms displayed on the ad pages, domain registration information (showing Chen Yiyi as the manager), and records of conversations during the conferences. The prosecution argued that as a website administrator and advertising contact person, Chen Yiyi should have been aware of the illegality of the products and highlighted her participation in fentanyl-related discussions.
In her defense, Chen Yiyi’s legal team emphasized that she was solely responsible for website technical support and translation work, not involved in company business decisions, nor authorized to engage in any commercial transactions. By questioning Chen Yiyi, her lawyer pointed out that she had forwarded notifications from Google requesting the removal of sensitive content to the business manager after understanding Google’s policies, enabling timely corrections and reactivation of the ad account, in an attempt to demonstrate her legal compliance awareness.
During her testimony, Chen Yiyi stated that she was not familiar with the specific uses of fentanyl. Addressing the prosecution’s allegations mentioned during the meetings, including the DEA undercover agent Gil’s statements about a “fentanyl formula causing the deaths of three Americans” and the desire to “lower concentration to maintain customer numbers,” she expressed disbelief, stating, “I felt like he was joking.”
The trial is set to enter the closing arguments phase on Tuesday, where both legal teams will summarize the key evidence and witness testimonies. Following this, the jury will deliberate in private before reaching a final verdict in the case.