Good points.
With Chinese in the US helping expose Hunter Biden’s actions, I’d read that the CCP was using people in the US to “get them”. So, I don’t know if there’s an angle here. If they wanted information (who did you give X to?) and maybe the thugs want a cut (give us money before we kill you). I dunno, but you have good points.
I do believe that there are CCP operatives in the US doing nefarious things, including kidnapping national chinese and taking them back to China, and even assassinating others here. But in this case, it’s probably just a simple kidnapping for ransom case that went bad.