CNN
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A former graduate scholar in Chicago was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday for spying for the Chinese authorities by gathering data on engineers and scientists in the United States.
Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese nationwide who got here to the US to research electrical engineering on the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2013 and later enlisted in the US Army Reserves, was arrested in 2018.
The 31-year-old was convicted final September of performing illegally as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and of constructing a fabric false assertion to the US Army.
According to the Justice Department, Ji was tasked with offering an intelligence officer with biographical data on people for potential recruitment as Chinese spies. The people included Chinese nationals who had been working as engineers and scientists in the US, a few of whom labored for American protection contractors.
Ji’s spying was a part of an effort by Chinese intelligence to receive entry to superior aerospace and satellite tv for pc applied sciences being developed by US firms, the Justice Department stated in a press release.
In 2016, a yr after commencement, Ji enlisted in the US Army Reserves underneath a program in which overseas nationals could be recruited if their abilities are thought-about “vital to the national interest.”
In his utility to be part of this system, Ji falsely acknowledged that he had not had any contact with a overseas authorities throughout the previous seven years. He additionally failed to disclose his relationship and contacts with Chinese intelligence officers in a subsequent interview with a US Army officer, in accordance to the Justice Department.
In 2018, Ji had a number of conferences with an undercover US regulation enforcement agent who was posing as a consultant of China’s MSS. During these conferences, Ji stated that together with his navy identification, he might go to and take photographs of “Roosevelt-class” plane carriers. Ji additionally defined that after he obtained his US citizenship and safety clearance by the Army Reserves program, he would search a job on the CIA, FBI or NASA, the Justice Department stated, citing proof at trial.
Ji supposed to carry out cybersecurity work at a type of companies in order that he would have entry to databases, together with people who contained scientific analysis, the Justice Department stated in the assertion.
Ji was working on the course of Xu Yanjun, a deputy division director on the Jiangsu provincial department of the MMS, the assertion stated.
Xu, a profession intelligence officer, was sentenced final yr to 20 years in prison for plotting to steal commerce secrets and techniques from a number of US aviation and aerospace firms. Xu was additionally the primary Chinese spy extradited to the US for trial, after being detained in Belgium in 2018 following an FBI investigation.