U.S. Citizen Sentenced for Spying on Behalf of China’s Intelligence Agency

Nov 29, 2024Ravie LakshmananCorporate Espionage / National Security

A 59-year-old U.S. citizen who immigrated from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been sentenced to four years in prison for conspiring to act as a spy for the country and sharing sensitive information about his employer with China’s principal civilian intelligence agency.

Ping Li, 59, of Wesley Chapel, Florida, is said to have served as a cooperative contact for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) as early as August 2012, working at their behest to obtain information that’s of interest to the Chinese government. Li was employed at telecom giant Verizon and later at information technology service company Infosys.

In addition to four years of jail time, Li has been handed a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. He was charged with acting as an agent of the PRC without notification to the Attorney General in late July 2024. Li subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges 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. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.

“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 in the sentencing memorandum, Li obtained information pertaining to Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy advocates, members of the Falun Gong religious movement, and U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, and shared them with two MSS officers, one of whom he befriended during high school and college in China.

He has also been found to have shared training applications used by Verizon for new employees, as well as materials relating to cybersecurity training, the SolarWinds cyber attack on the U.S. government in 2021, and publicly available information regarding several politicians. The details were transmitted using various anonymous Gmail and Yahoo! accounts.

The development comes as the U.S. government is actively investigating a widespread cyber espionage campaign undertaken by a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor called Salt Typhoon targeting major telecommunications companies in the country.

Earlier this August, the DoJ also convicted Shujun Wang, a resident of Queens, New York, for acting and conspiring to act as a covert Chinese agent while starting a pro-democracy advocacy outfit named Memorial Foundation opposing the current 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 Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DoJ’s National Security Division said at the time.

According to the China Threat Snapshot assessment released by the House Committee on Homeland Security (CHS) last month, there have been over 55 cases of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-related espionage across 20 states in the U.S.

This includes the transmission of sensitive military information to the PRC, theft of trade secrets to advance its goals, transnational repression schemes to target 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 said. “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.”