Chinese engineer sentenced to 8 years in US prison for spying | News Politics

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A former graduate college student in Chicago was sentenced to eight decades in jail Wednesday for spying for the Chinese governing administration by gathering information on engineers and researchers in the United States.

Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese national who came to the US to examine electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Know-how in 2013 and afterwards enlisted in the US Military Reserves, was arrested in 2018.

The 31-year-aged was convicted last September of performing illegally as an agent of China’s Ministry of Condition Stability (MSS) and of earning a materials untrue statement to the US Army.

In accordance to the Justice Section, Ji was tasked with providing an intelligence officer with biographical info on individuals for prospective recruitment as Chinese spies. The individuals included Chinese nationals who were performing as engineers and researchers in the US, some of whom worked for American defense contractors.

Ji’s spying was part of an work by Chinese intelligence to receive entry to superior aerospace and satellite technologies getting created by US businesses, the Justice Department explained in a assertion.

In 2016, a yr soon after graduation, Ji enlisted in the US Military Reserves beneath a system in which international nationals can be recruited if their skills are regarded “vital to the national fascination.”

In his software to be part of the program, Ji falsely said that he had not experienced any call with a international federal government within the earlier 7 many years. He also unsuccessful to disclose his romantic relationship and contacts with Chinese intelligence officers in a subsequent interview with a US Army officer, in accordance to the Justice Office.

In 2018, Ji experienced numerous meetings with an undercover US legislation enforcement agent who was posing as a representative of China’s MSS. For the duration of these conferences, Ji explained that with his military services identification, he could take a look at and take photos of “Roosevelt-class” plane carriers. Ji also defined that when he obtained his US citizenship and security clearance by the Army Reserves software, he would look for a position at the CIA, FBI or NASA, the Justice Division said, citing proof at trial.

Ji intended to execute cybersecurity work at one particular of those companies so that he would have obtain to databases, such as all those that contained scientific investigate, the Justice Office claimed in the statement.

Ji was working at the way of Xu Yanjun, a deputy division director at the Jiangsu provincial branch of the MMS, the assertion reported.

Xu, a vocation intelligence officer, was sentenced very last yr to 20 several years in jail for plotting to steal trade secrets from a number of US aviation and aerospace corporations. Xu was also the initial Chinese spy extradited to the US for demo, following staying detained in Belgium in 2018 pursuing an FBI investigation.