Glam lawyer and ex-Chinese spy mom made neighbours’ lives hell

A glamorous lawyer and her ‘millionaire’ mother screamed ‘derogatory abuse’ and banged paint tins in a campaign of harassment designed to make their neighbours’ lives a misery, a court heard.

Linda Lu, who once had an Instagram account boasting 330,000 followers, and Susan Chen, a former Chinese intelligence officer, branded the couple next door ‘retards’ during ten weeks of trouble after they moved into the previously-serene village street.

A jury heard the neighbours from hell also filmed James Smith as he went about his business after tensions first exploded over the cutting of a hedge separating their front driveways.

This afternoon a jury convicted the pair of causing serious alarm or distress to Mr Smith and wife Lynn after taking less than two hours to deliberate. They will be sentenced in December.

Lu, a 35-year-old solicitor who has previously been the subject of misconduct proceedings, and Chen, 61, were remanded into custody.

The pair were accused of shouting derogatory abuse and harassing, including through ‘periods of loud metallic banging’ thought to have been using paint tins, between mid-July and the end of September last year.

Jurors heard that the first interaction between the Smiths and the defendants involved a dispute over the hedge on July 18.

Mr Smith, a teacher, told the court he went out to trim the hedge but was met by Chen, who objected to what he was doing and claimed that it belonged to her. 

Lu then appeared at an upstairs window and began threatening him with legal action, prosecutor Steve Taylor said.

The defendants then began filming Mr Smith as he continued to cut his side of the hedge between their homes in Bassingham, Lincolnshire.

The victim said the harassment then escalated from ‘noises to verbal abuse and then audio playing 24 hours a day’.

Lincoln Crown Court heard one CCTV clip showed Mr Smith sitting in his garden and reading a book in the sunshine, with the sound of verbal abuse coming from next door, while footage from the front of the properties captured the mother-and-daughter filming him as he talked to a neighbour.

The Smiths went away in late August to ‘try and get some respite’. However, when they returned, banging from next door commenced ‘within 15 minutes’.

On 30 August, Mr Smith made a statement to Lincolnshire Police.

Mr Taylor told the court that, by September, incidents were happening on a ‘daily basis’ and did not stop after the defendants were visited by police.

Ms Chen and Ms Lu were arrested on 5 September and again at the end of that month.

Videos made by Mr Smith on 1, 2 and 4 September were played in court and the defendants could be heard ‘shouting derogatory abuse’, including words such as ‘retards’.

The defendants told police they were the ones being harassed. Chen accepted she had used the word ‘retards’ when ‘she was referring to people she was suing but couldn’t remember who’. She also claimed some of the shouting picked up on recordings could be explained by her arguing with her daughter.

The court heard Chen moved into the rented semi-detached property with her British partner – from whom she is now estranged – in March 2023 – four months before the harassment began – and was then joined by her lawyer daughter.

Chen told jurors she had previously spent 14 years serving in the Chinese Army, rising to the rank of Major, and then became a ‘millionaire’ after switching to a corporate career.

She said: ‘I became a millionaire, I earned my fortune. I decided to try something new, that is why I moved here (to the UK)’.

Jurors were told Chen met Lu’s father during her time in the Chinese Army, and he rose to the rank of General before retiring.

Lu has been unable to work as a solicitor in recent months after her practising certificate was not renewed by the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority as a result of the legal proceedings.

Three years ago she was cleared of misconduct by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over intemperate posts on her Instagram account.

The Scottish-qualified solicitor had worked in the London offices of two major US firms, Cadwalader Wickersham and Taft and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and the tribunal heard neither job went smoothly.

A panel was told Lu raised a grievance with Human Resources about 13 people at the latter firm, and posted about one of them on Instagram in June 2018, at a time when she was said to have had around 330,000 followers.

The tribunal heard she posted a picture of ‘the rear end of a corgi dog’ with the caption (as edited by the tribunal): ‘Ever want to kick someone’s c*** in so bad?! # diebitchdie f****** fat (first name of employee) Corgi can suck my d***’.

Lu left Pillsbury under a settlement agreement the following year but was later charged with misconduct by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over the corgi post and other posts that appeared on her account.

Lu told the resulting disciplinary tribunal that the corgi post ‘concerned an acquaintance’s dog who bit me and was then put down’, and the other posts were by someone who must have hacked into her account, and was later cleared of misconduct.

Lu and Chen were remanded into custody yesterday until sentencing.

Both defendants represented themselves in court and a trial with an original estimate of six days ended up running into its sixth week.

Outside court, PC Jordan Bathie-Drexler, of Lincolnshire Police, said: ‘Nobody should fear sitting in their own garden, walking their children to school, or worry about barrages of abuse on a regular basis, simply because their neighbours have developed an unhealthy obsession with them. 

‘Stalking has such a negative impact on a victim’s life; it consumes them, takes over their feelings of wellbeing, happiness, and safety, and leaves them vulnerable.

‘I want to take a moment to praise the victims in this case, who have conducted themselves with absolute dignity in the face of a very difficult case. Today’s guilty verdict is a welcome one, and we hope that the victims in this case can now find a way to move forward.’

A former neighbour of Chen described the woman as a ‘fitness fanatic who never worked’. 

The woman, who lived near Chen in Balderton, Nottinghamshire, five years ago told MailOnline: ‘I’m surprised to hear what they have done. She and Linda were very quiet when they lived near me. Susan played a lot of golf and liked jogging, but I never had any problems from either of them.’