US Secures Convictions, Guilty Pleas as CCP-Directed Spying Exposed

 

‘The threat is deep’ says expert and author, but expect U.S. law enforcement to make ’many more' arrests of agents acting at the behest of the CCP.

For years, Beijing has been deepening its hold on America, drawing intelligence from the U.S. government while silencing critics with the help of agents embedded in U.S. society.

In recent years, the United States has been pushing back, according to experts.

In early September, prosecutors arrested Linda Sun, former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accusing her of acting on behalf of Beijing in exchange for gifts and payouts valued in millions of dollars to her family.

There has also been a marked increase in the rate of convictions or pleas in recent months. The Justice Department has brought forth dozens of CCP-directed espionage and foreign agent cases in the past four years, resulting in at least 13 convictions or pleas, with more than half of those taking place this year—including three in the past month. an Epoch Times review of the court records show.

On Aug. 6, a Chinese American scholar posing as a pro-democracy activist was convicted by a jury for spying on dissidents for the CCP.

On Aug. 13, a U.S. army intelligence analyst from Texas pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the CCP.

On Aug. 23, a software engineer who worked two decades at Verizon pleaded guilty to gathering intelligence on countless dissidents and organizations targeted by the CCP since 2012.

Case documents reveal a broad range of criminal actions taken by agents, often different from what most may imagine to be spying. Beyond industrial espionage and covert influence campaigns, the regime has directed hacker rings, including a group that was charged and sanctioned this year for waging a 14-year campaign on the United States.

“I feel that our nation must take every opportunity to stop these threats,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee for the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times, noting that the U.S. intelligence community has identified Beijing as the number one threat to the United States.

Bacon has experienced Chinese espionage attempts firsthand. Last year, he was hacked by CCP-linked hackers who also broke into email systems of State and Commerce department officials and dozens of other groups.

“Can we ever say that whatever actions we are taking are enough? I don’t believe so as the threats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and national security impact,” Bacon said.

Who Are the Spies?

The CCP has long targeted people of Chinese descent—of whom there are more than 60 million people outside China—as potential assets in its intelligence operations.

Among those charged by the DOJ in the foreign agent cases are officials of the CCP’s top intelligence gathering agency Ministry of State Security (MSS), Chinese citizens traveling to the United States under false pretenses, hackers residing in Asian countries; as well as asylees, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent.

Some reside in the United States while dozens of others charged are known to reside in China, and will now face arrest if they ever set foot on American soil.

There are also many who are U.S. citizens that aren’t of Chinese descent. They include active military members, former law enforcement, and experts in competitive fields.

Linda Sun, a former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and her husband, Chris Hu, exit the federal court in Brooklyn after Sun was charged with acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, in New York City on Sept. 3, 2024. 

The CCP engages in what experts such as Casey Fleming, chair and CEO of risk consultancy BlackOps Partners, describe as “unrestricted warfare,” meaning there are no legal, ethical, or moral lines it will not cross to pursue its objectives. It capitalizes on one’s baser instincts—greed, pride, lust, shame—to recruit assets.

“Number one, it’s money. Number two, it’s ego. Number three, it’s blackmail,” Fleming, who advises the DOJ, FBI, and Congress on the CCP threat, told The Epoch Times.

In May, two New Yorkers pleaded guilty in an indictment that charged seven, including MSS officials in China, for trying to coerce an American family to go back to China to be imprisoned by the CCP.

The defendant had harassed the Chinese man with bogus lawsuits and told the victim it “really is a drop in the bucket for a country to spend $1 billion” to achieve what the CCP ordered, promising “endless misery” for the victim, he said. “It is definitely true that all of your relatives will be involved.”

In January, a former U.S. Navy sailor was sentenced to 27 months for giving sensitive military information to the CCP over the course of almost two years, in return for about $14,000.

“I mean, he’s paying me so I was like, okay, I’ll just do whatever he says,” the sailor told the FBI in an interview, describing the job as “easy money.”

Several other cases involving former military members include an indicted Navy sailor and army soldier, and a former U.S. army helicopter pilot who pleaded guilty.

Last month, Sgt. Korbein Schultz, an army intelligence analyst with the First Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment at Fort Campbell, pleaded guilty to sending military secrets to a CCP agent, receiving $42,000 in return.

Beginning around June 2022, Schultz began sending sensitive military files to an unnamed conspirator working for the CCP.  Schultz received payment up to $1,000 per document in return.

A month into the partnership, Schultz told the conspirator he would like to turn the relationship into a long term one, according to the indictment. He provided materials including details about U.S. precision rockets, their performance, and how they would be used. He also shared manuals and technical data of several US aircraft, documents referencing the Chinese military, and documents related to the U.S. military forces in the Indo-Pacific.

(Top) Zhu Yong returns to Brooklyn Federal Court for a trial in New York City on May 31, 2023. America's first federal trial got underway over China's alleged attempts to forcibly repatriate its citizens under a campaign known as Operation Fox Hunt. (Bottom) Congying Zhen leaves Brooklyn Federal Court in New York City on May 31, 2023. 

The conspirator asked for information of higher levels of classification as the partnership progressed and promised higher payments for more exclusive information.

“I hope so! I need to get my other BMW back!” Schultz wrote in response to the promise of higher pay. He told the conspirator he wished he could be “Jason Bourne,” and brought up the idea of moving to Hong Kong so he could work for the conspirator in person.

Four months into the partnership, the conspirator raised the suggestion of recruiting another service member who had access to higher classified information, and Schultz set out to do so over the next few months.

In another case, two men who pleaded guilty in July to acting as CCP agents had tried to bribe an IRS agent to target Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice with five meditative exercises and teaches the principles truth, compassion, and tolerance. Since 1999, the CCP has sought to “eradicate” the practice in a whole-of-state approach.

Unbeknownst to the two men, the IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent, who took the $5,000 bribe and offer of $50,000 total as evidence in their case. In a recorded call, one of the two men, John Chen, said the money came from Chinese authorities, who were “very generous” when it came to their goal to “topple” Falun Gong.

Insider Threat

Fleming says some “insider threats” were planted in companies and the military decades ago, pointing to the former Verizon software engineer who had been sending the CCP data on Chinese dissidents in America since at least 2012 as an example, and companies are now beginning to recognize the long term effort with these high profile cases.

Some recruits are attracted by the money, others prestige. “They’ve done that to Harvard professors and so on: ‘We’re going to let you set up a sister lab in China ... and you’ll be the head of the lab,‘” Fleming said as an example. “’You’re so smart and accomplished. We‘d like you to do a white paper.’”

Fleming said he receives a few of these offers a year himself. The most recent one, from Hong Kong, came just months ago. He promptly deleted it. “I know what’s going on, but many people don’t, and they take $7,500 to do a white paper,” Fleming said.

Casey Fleming, CEO of BlackOps Partners Corporation, speaks at the Borderless Cyber conference in Washington on Oct. 4, 2018. 

The initial task may be innocuous enough, and pointedly aboveboard. But the second offer may require more exclusive information that makes use of the recruit’s company’s intellectual property, and the third even more exclusive trade secrets. By that time, the experts are subject to blackmail, having already violated company regulations and the law.

“They pay a little more, they ask for more,” Fleming said. “This happens every day in the United States.”

The offers can come from a wide range of people, he said, but, “the Chinese Communist Party is the grand puppetmaster.”

Sam Cooper, author of “Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West,” says there is also a pattern of the CCP making use of former law enforcement.

“Chinese secret police and United Front networks are absolutely making deep efforts to hire, for example ... the IRS, Border services, and these [former police] private eyes who still maintain close and friendly relationships with their colleagues who are still in law enforcement and have access to privileged and private databases,” Cooper told The Epoch Times.

In the case of the individuals trying to coerce a family to move back to China where the CCP could imprison them, one of the defendants was a former NYPD sergeant turned private investigator.

According to case records, Michael McMahon knowingly helped men working for the CCP to locate the victim’s address, surveil and harass the victim, and even used his police contacts to keep them away from the neighborhood ahead of a confrontation in the event someone called the police to report suspicious activity.

Three of the conspirators reside in the United States and have been tried, while several others remain at large and include MSS officials in China.

A security guard stands outside the Tibet Hall of the Great Hall of the People during the Tibet delegation meeting at the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 6, 2024. 

In these recently successful cases, the United States has relied on rights that starkly contrast with those of the CCP.

“Unlike the victims that the defendants stalked for the Chinese government outside of the U.S. system, the defendants in this case have been given their due process,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Heeren during closing arguments.

“We’ve reached the end of the criminal justice process where the defendants have had a fair trial. Now it’s time for them to be held accountable for their actions, for terrorizing the people you saw here at the direction of the Chinese government. Ladies and gentlemen, find these defendants guilty.”

The jury unanimously returned a guilty verdict, and the three face sentencing this month.

Sowing Discord and Division

As seen in recent cases, the insider threat is found in anti-CCP groups, too.

Last month, Wang Shujun pleaded guilty as a foreign agent for the CCP. The case revealed the double life of a prominent Chinese American scholar and CCP critic who co-founded a pro-democracy foundation, while simultaneously spying on Chinese dissidents, passing their information onto the MSS.

Wang came to the United States in 1994 and founded a pro-democracy group in 2006, the same year he began working for the MSS, according to evidence gathered by prosecutors. For almost two decades, Wang regularly reported on the activities of anti-CCP activists to the MSS, passing along plans and personal information.

Wang Shujun stands outside federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on July 30, 2024. 

Recently, a second prominent Chinese dissident was charged, with evidence showing he engaged in similar activities as Wang. Tang Yuanjun had been jailed in China for participating in the pro-democracy protests of 1989, culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre, and after he was released he escaped on a fishing boat, then swam to Taiwan.

According to the indictment, he didn’t begin spying for the MSS until 2018, after he tried to visit a family member residing in China. It is an open question whether Tang was coerced by the CCP into spying, as threatening the life of family members in China is standard practice for the MSS.

“They use soft power. They use people’s greed. They use coercion, especially Chinese Americans, you may have family back home that they can really turn the screws to to have people behave in a way that they know they shouldn’t,”  Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) told NTD, sister media to The Epoch Times.

“This influence scheme and operation that they have going on, it’s at the state level, the local level, the national level, and at every element of our society.”

Xiong Yan is running for Congress in New York's 10th congressional district, in July, 2022. Yan, an anti-CCP activist, was a target of the CCP despite being relatively unknown. 

Justice Department officials are quick to point out the Chinese Americans are often victims, not perpetrators, in these cases. For example, Xiong Yan, an anti-CCP activist who once made a longshot run for Congress, was a target of the CCP despite being relatively unknown.

Five men were charged with conspiring to “undermine” Yan’s candidacy, with text exchanges revealing plots to beat him, or create a car accident to “completely wreck” him, or hire a prostitute to get compromising photos of him, or even plant child pornography to incriminate him.

“They’re sowing divisions and discord within our societies,” said Cooper. “They’re violently threatening, perhaps even harming in some cases, citizens that came to a new nation for a free and democratic life ... they’re meddling with the social cohesion of our democratic nations and dividing societies, creating distrust.”

Cooper’s book exposed the CCP’s deep infiltration of Vancouver beginning in the 1980s, and how that model had been exported to other Western cities. He testified before the Canadian Parliament about the CCP threat, and he was warned by national security officers about threats to his safety because of his ongoing reporting. Cooper, like Fleming, has received recruitment offers from CCP-linked entities that he’s turned down.

“The targeting of the community. It’s a targeting of dissidents. It’s using people as tools to get China’s way in the United States,” Cooper said. “Of all the nations that face these threats from China, the United States is doing the most to protect its diaspora community and doing the most to protect its political system. But obviously the threat is deep. The U.S. has strong law enforcement, and we can expect many more cases in the near future.”

‘On the Front Lines’

One blatant example of CCP-directed activity occurred during the APEC summit last year when pro-CCP protestors harassed and assaulted human rights demonstrators.

Anna Kwok, executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, was there in San Francisco in November 2023 to protest the human rights suppression in her home city and recalled pro-CCP agents holding flagpoles trying to beat up activists on her side.

Investigative journalist Sam Cooper arrives to appear before Canada's Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 20, 2023. 

Throughout that week, friends surrounded her on the streets to create a human shield and protect her from physical harm. But others weren’t so lucky. A recent report her group co-authored on the violence documented 34 cases of harassment, intimidation, and assault. At least a dozen Chinese community leaders with close connections to Beijing participated in the attacks, according to the report.

It was a reminder that “the U.S. is not as safe as I thought it would be,” Kwok told The Epoch Times.

Hong Kong authorities have also targeted activists such as Kwok. Last July, they issued an arrest warrant for Kwok with a bounty of 1 million Hong Kong dollars (around $120,000). They also tried to probe Hongkongers in the United States for intelligence about members of her group.

Part of the CCP’s goal is to spread fear, to make them feel they are being watched 24/7, she said.

After Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials publicized the bounty, some people in the Hong Kong community began to wear facial masks or stand away from Kwok for fear they would be photographed alongside her, she said.

Anna Kwok, Hong Kong Democracy Council executive director, testifies during a hearing before the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 13, 2023. 

“That kind of fear spreads. And I think that that’s exactly what the Chinese government is trying to do,” she said. She thinks it’s a way to target the dissident community at large, “such that the entire community will feel that sense of fear and succumb to it.”

It’s hard to measure how deep the regime has infiltrated the state and federal level, but what has come out of the Justice Department prosecutions should be a cue for Americans to keep their eyes open, said Kwok.

“Otherwise, we will just be in the same loop over and over again.”

Fleming, meanwhile, hopes to see more resources dedicated to training Americans on spotting and reporting Chinese espionage and infiltration activities.

“I think we’re getting better,“ he said, but it’s still ”nowhere near where it needs to be.”

The Chinese regime’s tactics are evolving, new technologies are being exploited, and “the American people are on the front lines,” he said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/us-secures-convictions-guilty-pleas-as-ccp-directed-spying-exposed-5722945