A 59-year-old US citizen who immigrated from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was awarded up to four years in prison for conspiring to spy for the country and passing confidential information about his employer to China’s top civilian intelligence service.
Ping Li, 59, of Wesley Chapel, Florida, is said to have served as a liaison to the Ministry of State Security (MSS) as recently as August 2012, working on their behalf to obtain information of interest to the Chinese government. Lee worked at telecommunications giant Verizon and later at information technology services company Infosys.
In addition to the four years in prison, Lee was fined $250,000 and served three years of supervised release. He was is charged acting as an agent of the PRC without notifying the Attorney General at the end of July 2024. Later Lee pleaded guilty to the charges in a month.
“The MSS often uses ‘joint contacts’ located in countries outside the PRC to achieve its intelligence objectives, which include obtaining information about foreign corporate or industrial affairs, foreign politicians or intelligence officers, and information about PRC political dissidents who live in these countries. “, the US Department of Justice said.
“These joint 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 mission.”
As it turned out in memorandum of judgmentLi obtained information relating to Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy activists, members of the Falun Gong religious movement, and American non-governmental organizations, and shared it with two MSS officers, one of whom he had befriended during high school and college in China.
He was also found to have shared the training programs Verizon uses for new employees, as well as materials related to cybersecurity training, SolarWinds cyber attack about the US government in 2021, as well as public information about several politicians. The details were shared using various anonymous Gmail and Yahoo! accounts.
Development is in partnership with the US government is actively investigating a widespread cyberespionage campaign launched by a Chinese state-owned threat actor called Salt Typhoon is targeting major telecommunications companies in the country.
Earlier this August, the Justice Department also indicted Shujun Wang, a resident of Queens, New York, for acting and conspiring with an undercover Chinese agent while establishing a pro-democracy organization called the Memorial Foundation, which opposes the current communist regime in China.
“This defendant infiltrated a New York-based human rights group by posing as a pro-democracy activist while secretly collecting and reporting classified information about its members to the PRC’s intelligence services,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division. said at that time.
According to the China Threat Imaging Assessment released by the House Committee on Homeland Security (CHS) last month, more than 55 cases of espionage linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have been reported in 20 US states
This includes the transfer of sensitive military information to the PRC, the theft of trade secrets to further their own ends, transnational schemes to repress PRC dissidents, and obstruction of justice.
“Between 2000 and 2023, there were 224 reported cases of Chinese espionage directed against the United States,” the report said. said. “About 80% of economic espionage prosecutions allege conduct that will benefit the Chinese state, and there is at least some connection to China in about 60% of all trade secret theft cases.”
