Congressional Investigation: Webull's Chinese Employees Accessed U.S. User Data
nashnova research
The U.S. House Select Committee on China released internal chat logs showing a Webull employee based in China handled U.S. customer account information — directly contradicting the company's claim that American data access is controlled stateside. The revelation puts Webull and its ~28 million users under fresh regulatory scrutiny.
What do the chat logs actually show?
In 2021, Webull's U.S. brokerage manager Brendan Fuller exchanged Microsoft Teams messages with an employee nicknamed "Rock" — Zhenghan Wang — about a specific trading account.
The logs show that account was approved by "one China-based team member and one U.S.-based team member." This means → the China-side employee didn't just view the account — they took part in the approval process.
Wang described the U.S. Customer Identification Program (CIP) as effectively useless, writing the assessment in Chinese characters. In plain terms = he considered the verification system meant to protect user data a formality with no teeth.
How does the committee know this employee was in China?
The committee's conclusion rests on two technical details: message timestamps aligned with Beijing daytime hours, and Wang's Teams software was set to translate messages into Simplified Chinese.
Together, these form a circumstantial evidence chain — not definitive proof, but strongly directional.
This reflects a shift in the congressional investigation: moving beyond corporate-level statements into individual employee behavior as evidence.
How did Webull respond?
When asked by CNBC, Webull's spokesperson did not directly answer whether Wang accessed U.S. customer data in 2021.
The company repeated its standing position: U.S. customer data is stored only on Amazon Web Services servers in Virginia and Oregon, and sensitive-data access is "limited to U.S.-based employees."
Webull also challenged the committee's timing, calling the chat logs part of "a closed 2021 FINRA routine matter" and the report "reliant on preliminary and outdated information." This means → Webull's strategy is to frame the issue as old news — rather than address the data-access contradiction head-on.
What does this mean for Webull and the market?
This disclosure follows the select committee's October 7 report, which concluded Webull is structurally linked to the Chinese government and poses a threat to U.S. financial security.
On the day that report dropped, Webull's stock fell more than 19%.
The tug-of-war between the committee and Webull continues. In plain terms = the 2021 chat logs have turned "can Chinese employees access U.S. user data" from a broad structural concern into a specific, evidence-backed dispute — and that dispute is now likely the centerpiece of any further regulatory review.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。