A 59-year-old U.S. citizen who immigrated from the Individuals’s Republic of China (PRC) has been sentenced to 4 years in jail for conspiring to behave as a spy for the nation and sharing delicate details about his employer with China’s principal civilian intelligence company.
Ping Li, 59, of Wesley Chapel, Florida, is alleged to have served as a cooperative contact for the Ministry of State Safety (MSS) as early as August 2012, working at their behest to acquire info that is of curiosity to the Chinese language authorities. Li was employed at telecom big Verizon and later at info know-how service firm Infosys.
Along with 4 years of jail time, Li has been handed a $250,000 fantastic and three years of supervised launch. He was charged with performing as an agent of the PRC with out notification to the Legal professional Normal in late July 2024. Li subsequently pleaded responsible to the fees a month later.
“The MSS often uses ‘cooperative contacts’ located in countries outside of the PRC in furtherance of their intelligence goals, which include obtaining information concerning foreign corporate or industrial matters, foreign politicians or intelligence officers, and information concerning PRC political dissidents residing in those countries,” the U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) stated.
“These cooperative contacts assist the MSS in a variety of ways, including by conducting research on topics of interest to the PRC that can be used to further the MSS’s mission.”
As revealed within the sentencing memorandum, Li obtained info pertaining to Chinese language dissidents and pro-democracy advocates, members of the Falun Gong non secular motion, and U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, and shared them with two MSS officers, one among whom he befriended throughout highschool and faculty in China.
He has additionally been discovered to have shared coaching purposes utilized by Verizon for brand new staff, in addition to supplies referring to cybersecurity coaching, the SolarWinds cyber assault on the U.S. authorities in 2021, and publicly accessible info concerning a number of politicians. The small print have been transmitted utilizing varied nameless Gmail and Yahoo! accounts.
The event comes because the U.S. authorities is actively investigating a widespread cyber espionage marketing campaign undertaken by a Chinese language state-sponsored menace actor known as Salt Hurricane focusing on main telecommunications corporations within the nation.
Earlier this August, the DoJ additionally convicted Shujun Wang, a resident of Queens, New York, for performing and conspiring to behave as a covert Chinese language agent whereas beginning a pro-democracy advocacy outfit named Memorial Basis opposing the present communist regime in China.
“This defendant infiltrated a New York-based advocacy group by masquerading as a pro-democracy activist all while covertly collecting and reporting sensitive information about its members to the PRC’s intelligence service,” Assistant Legal professional Normal Matthew G. Olsen of the DoJ’s Nationwide Safety Division stated on the time.
Based on the China Menace Snapshot evaluation launched by the Home Committee on Homeland Safety (CHS) final month, there have been over 55 circumstances of Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP)-related espionage throughout 20 states within the U.S. from January 2021 to October 2024.
This contains the transmission of delicate army info to the PRC, theft of commerce secrets and techniques to advance its targets, transnational repression schemes to focus on PRC dissidents, and obstruction of justice.
“Between 2000 and 2023, there have been 224 reported incidents of Chinese espionage directed at the U.S.,” the report stated. “About 80% of economic espionage prosecutions allege conduct that would benefit the Chinese state, and there is at least some nexus to China in around 60% of all trade secret theft cases.”
