China's Invasion Has Begun

A Chinese casino is suspected of moneyaundering, corruption, and

immigration violations in a US territory

. Strangely, the FBI has just closed their investigation

. And the governor who begged them to investigate,

well, he just died suddenly.

Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chapel

. Remember to watch this episode

to the end and leave a honeypot comment

below to beat YouTube's algorithm.

So, what if I told you that the Chinese Communist Party is already invading the United States

, a strategically crucial

part of the United States?

This is the Commonwealth of the Northern Marana Islands, or CNMI for short

, and it's a US territory

. How many of you learned about this in school?

Me neither.

Personally, I blame Ran McN.

Hey Ran, this is not a map of the entire United States

. Miss Thorny Croft showed my classroom a map of lies

. Lies.

Okay, back to CNNI.

Notice that it's the closest US territory to China.

It's also right above Guam, which has a couple of US military bases

. Both of those things are important

. The largest island in CNMI is Saipan

. You may have heard of it because one of the biggest battles of World War II in the Pacific

was the Battle of Saipan

. The US Department ofDefense is currently pumping $800 million

into CNMI to upgrade its military facilities

because in a war with China over Taiwan

, this place would be, let's say, pretty relevant

. The Chinese Communist Party knows that.

Which means the CCP's political warfare in CNMI is off the charts

. Political warfare is how the CCP conquers a place

without firing a single shot.

For years, CNMI's governor Arnold Palasios

had tried to root out corruption,

some of which is tied to CCP influence operations and Chinese money

. Most recently, in April 2025,

he sent a letter calling for an investigation,

saying he had considerable evidence

to provide directly to the FBI.

The governor also repeatedly asked the federal government for help auditing

CNMI's government, including figuring

out where over a billion dollars of COVID relief money had gone

. This man was asking for more accountants

. He was asking to be audited by the government.

That didn't make him the most popular guy

. You know, sometimes maybe I'll just fold my 10 and raise my hand, say

"Okay, maybe I got it wrong."

Because sometimes I feel like I'm just a John John the Baptist out in the desert.

Seriously, that's sometimes how that's how lonely

it has been for the past 9 to 10 months.

Governor Palasios was also trying to end

CNMI's economic overreiance on Chinese money

. That didn't make him the most popular guy with the CCP either.

Governor Palasios was the only outspoken CNMI official standing up to CCP influence

and public corruption.

And he died suddenly last week,

which means now is the critical time to launch an investigation before evidence

can be hidden or destroyed

. So, how bad are things in CNMI

? Let's talk about moneyaundering

. This is Swayi Jay.

Yeah, you can already tell the story is going to be good just from that hat

. This is her son, Gi Shiao

. Sway and J made money

in real estate and pawn shops in

northern China. Then they moved down to

Macau and became junket operators.

Junkits are how China's filthy rich use

Macau's casinos to launder their money.

Then in 2014, the CCP started cracking

down on junkit operators. But that's okay

because Soy and her son had already

set their sights on Saipan on US soil.

Casinos were illegal in Saipan until

lawmakers fasttracked and passed a

casino bill in 2014. Remember the same

time China was cracking down on junkets

in Macau. And this is after three

previous casino bills had been defeated.

So what changed? Well, lawmakers were

taken on a factf finding mission to

Macau and saw just how great casinos were

. And that trip was arranged and

paid for by a company tied to Gi Shiao.

His mom sway J then won the only casino

license on Saipan through a company

eventually named Imperial Palace International

. According to Forbes,

critics of the casino bill thought the

bill was designed for Imperial Palace

International from the start.

As part of the license, Imperial Palace was

required to build a casino with 2,000

hotel rooms and pay $30 million in

gaming taxes upfront. But Imperial

Palace wanted to start a casino ASAP.

They didn't want to wait to build a

casino with 2,000 hotel rooms. So, in 2015

, they opened a temporary casino in

a duty-free mall on Saipan.

It was the size of a suburban olive garden. But

instead of unlimited bread sticks, it

was unlimited suspicious financial

activity. In just three months, this

cozy little casino reported $5.3

billion in VIP bets with fewer than 20 VIP tables.

Soon it was doing over $2 billion in VIP

bets a month. By the first half of 2017,

it was turning over nearly six times

more cash table for table than Macau

casinos. Yeah, a casino the size of an

Olive Garden was doing better than Macau

casinos, which dwarf the ones in Vegas.

And remember, Macau is a notorious money

laundering hub. Bloomberg News

interviewed a bunch of casino executives

who all said there was no way Imperial

Palace was generating these volumes

legitimately. In fact, one of the

executives burst out laughing.

I mean, if the story doesn't make you

laugh, it'll make you cry. Imperial

Palace did a bunch of other sketchy

things in Saipan, like paying millions

of dollars in land leases to the family

members of the then governor. Let me

remind you this is all happening on US

soil. And oh, let's talk about who was

linked to Imperial Palace. It was paying

three former US governors and a former

FBI director as advisors.

And it also had a retired military judge

and a former CIA director on its board

of directors. Which really raises the

question, did anyone not get paid by

this casino? Hey, want to see this

picture I found of Sway Jay and

President Obama? Okay, I'm not saying that President Obama was involved in the casino

, but at some point in 2016,

several executives of Imperial Palace,

including Toy visited the US mainland

and somehow met with President Obama.

It's not clear why, but it gives you a

sense of how Imperial Palace was able to

tap into the top levels of American society

. Shaking hands with the US

president is pretty good for business.

Okay, back to the shady stuff.

Remember that huge casino Imperial Palace was

supposed to build? Well, they did build

it with shoddy construction, shoddy,

tasteless construction, and with

undocumented Chinese workers who were

getting constantly injured due to lack

safety standards. But it wasn't until a

worker fell to his death that the FBI

started looking into Imperial Palace.

How did those Chinese workers get to Saipan?

Well, CNMI is the only place in the US

where Chinese nationals can enter without a visa

. Under this visa waiver

program, they are only supposed to stay

for 14 days, and they're not supposed to

leave CNMI. It's all supposed to promote

Chinese tourism to CNMI.

But FBI raids on Imperial Palace found that hundreds

of Chinese had overstayed and were

illegally working construction. ,

Okay let's pause on the casino story for a minute

so we can talk about how insane it is

that Chinese citizens can just

enter the US without a visa.

This has caused all sorts of problems like

Chinese citizens illegally getting US driver's licenses

. In 2023, the head of CNMI's Bureau of Motor Vehicles

was sentenced to 5 years in prison for

providing these driver's licenses.

She charged $1,700 for a new license and

$300 for a renewal

. And I bet those Chinese nationals didn't even have to

wait in line. And despite not being

allowed to leave CNMI, hundreds of Chinese without visas

have been traveling to Guam

. Last year, seven Chinese nationals were arrested

trying to illegally enter Guam

during US missile testing.

Four of them were near a military base.

Okay, the frustrating thing here is that

the Imperial Palace story is so bad that

I don't even have time to tell you about

all the other really bad stuff the CCP

is doing, like about this guy, Yaong,

who was arrested in CMI for trying to

smuggle in liquid meth disguised in lava lamps

. In addition to his drug smuggling

network, he also had a birth tourism

business bringing Chinese women to

Saipan to have anchor babies.

They'd be US citizens.

And he was also arrested for murder in the Pacific island of Palao.

Yeah, the meth smuggling, human

trafficking, possible murderer

is the less bad story here.

Despite the clear threat to US national security

, the US government seems to

have barely scratched the surface of the

CCP's political warfare in CNMI.

Do you think we should maybe stop letting

Chinese nationals come into America without visas

? Okay, back to Imperial Palace

. In 2019, the FBI raided the

former governor's office and Imperial

Palace during an investigation into

money laundering and wire fraud from foreign entities

. During that investigation

, the FBI did file a civil

forfeite complaint against a different company

, Mariana's Consultancy Services,

which was a consultant for Imperial

Palace, but they never filed anything

against Imperial Palace or the former governor

. And just a few weeks ago, the

FBI confirmed they are closing that investigation

May I remind you that Imperial Palace

had a former FBI director as an adviser

and a former CIA director on its board of directors.

Meanwhile, Imperial Palace had closed

during COVID and declared bankruptcy last year

. But that doesn't mean the story's over

. Because the company that's

trying to buy Imperial Palace's assets

and it casino license in CNMI, Team King

Investments, is closely linked to the

owners of Imperial Palace.

It's like the Corleó declared bankruptcy and sold

their olive oil company to their cousins

. Like I said earlier, Governor Palasios

was pretty much the only

official in CNMI speaking out against

CCP influence and trying to stop the

territo's dependence on Chinese money.

Meanwhile, CNMI's congressional

representative Kimberlin King Hines is

lobbying for more Chinese tourism, more

direct flights from mainland China, and

keeping the visa waiver program going

strong because it's worked really well so far

. And she's doing that despite the

fact that Chinese tourism hasn't

recovered since co and most tourists to

CNMI are now from South Korea, not China

. There are still people in CNMI

who are trying to stop CCP political warfare

. But after the sudden death of

Governor Palasios, they're scared. And

the window for a transparent

investigation into what's happening in

CNMI is rapidly closing.

If CNMI falls to political warfare,

this isn't just about an island chain in the Pacific.

It's about the CCP landing a beach head inside US territory

. If you're an American who's concerned about what's happening in CNMI

, call your congressperson

and ask them to close the

visa waiver program that allows Chinese

citizens to enter the US without visas

in the Commonwealth of Northern Marana Islands

. There are already people in

Congress seeking to end the visa waiver program

. It's time to stop playing

roulette with US national security.

If you're interested in this topic,

click this button.

We just did a special China unscripted podcast with Cleo Pascal on CNMI

. And because of the urgency of thisissue

, we're removing the payw wall for

this podcast for a limited time. So

check it out at chinaunensored.tv.

Link is below. Once again, I'm Chris Chapel

. Thank you for watching China Uncensored