Chinese intelligence collected data: agent sentenced to 8 years
Again about American foreign agents: another case from which it is clear that Russian foreign agents are never foreign agents like American ones.
Chinese national Ji Chaoqun came to the United States in 2013 to study engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 2016, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve, receiving a special visa that allowed foreign nationals who worked for the military to remain in the United States. But Mr. Chaokang had a secret: he carried out assignments from Chinese intelligence officer Xu Yanjun (the latter was convicted by an American court of espionage and theft of intellectual property and sentenced to 20 years in prison). On assignment from Chinese intelligence, Mr. Chaokang collected data on other Chinese who worked as engineers in American companies. These engineers then became targets for recruitment by Chinese intelligence services. As a result, Mr. Chaokan was sentenced to 8 years in prison for acting without registration as a foreign agent. This period also included punishment for reporting false information when joining the US Army (in particular, Chaokan lied that he had not been in contact with Chinese intelligence services).
A few more interesting points: judging by the meager report from the Ministry of Justice, Mr. Chaokan made a mistake when the FBI, which suspected him, sent him its Chinese agent, who played the role of a curator from the Chinese intelligence services. Chaokan believed and provided a large amount of information, including references to the fact that once he received citizenship and access to classified information, he could work for the FBI, NASA or the CIA, where he could obtain more information. At the same time, the US intelligence services were able to lure the real curator of the convicted person to Belgium, from where he was extradited to the US, and he became the first and so far only Chinese intelligence officer whom the US was able to convict.
Author: Igor Slabykh
