Chinese national pleads guilty to running 'birth tourism' in US

A Chinese national has pleaded guilty to the charges of running a California-based "birth tourism" business that catered to wealthy pregnant clients and Chinese government officials, charging them tens of thousands of dollars to help them give birth in the US so their children would get American citizenship, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Dongyuan Li, 41, of Irvine in California, who was one of 19 defendants named in a series of indictments unsealed earlier this year, is first of the charged operators of birth tourism businesses to plead guilty. The remaining defendants either are pending trial or are fugitives.

In her guilty plea, Li admitted that, from 2013 until March 2015, she operated a birth tourism company in Irvine and in China called You Win USA Vacation Services Corp. She faces a 15 years of imprisonment.

You Win would assist pregnant foreign nationals typically from China to travel to and remain in the US to give birth so their children would receive birthright