The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges and arrests this week in regards to Chinese clandestine activity in the United States that ranged from targeting Chinese residents in the U.S. with harassment and intimidation to get them to return to China, posing as university professors in an attempt to recruit U.S.-based spies for China and attempted obstruction of the federal investigation into telecommunications vendor Huawei.
DoJ made two arrests and filed 13 charges in three separate cases.
In the case involving Huawei (identified as Company-1), filed in the Eastern District of New York, DoJ says that two Chinese citizens who work for the company in the U.S., whom it said are Chinese intelligence agents, put together a scheme to steal files and other information from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which is also conducting the ongoing investigation into Huawei. The defendants believed they had recruited an insider to work on China’s behalf to steal and pass information to them in order to interfere with that investigation, and they paid a $41,000 Bitcoin bribe to that person—who was actually an FBI double agent, DoJ says.
“Today’s complaint underscores the unrelenting efforts of the PRC government to undermine the rule of law,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. “As alleged, the case involves an effort by PRC intelligence officers to obstruct an ongoing criminal prosecution by making bribes to obtain files from this Office and sharing them with a global telecommunications company that is a charged defendant in an ongoing prosecution. We will always act decisively to counteract criminal acts that target our system of justice.”
DOJ said the two people involved asked, in written communications, for information from their supposed “insider”, including which company employees had been interviewed by government investigators and descriptions of prosecutors’ witness list, evidence and trial strategy. In response, the double-agent sent them one page of a supposed strategy memo marked “SECRET”, which outlined plans to charge two company employees living in China. The double-agent was paid with $41,000 in Bitcoin at that point, with one of the alleged spies responding that the material was “exactly what I am waiting for”, according to the DOJ. That person, Dong He, also allegedly told the double-agent that he had refused the telecom company’s request to speak directly with the double-agent because “it’s too dangerous.”
If convicted, Dong He faces up to 40 years of imprisonment and co-conspirator Zheng Wang faces up to 20 years.
“These indictments of PRC intelligence officers and government officials – for trying to obstruct a U.S. trial of a Chinese company, masquerading as university professors to steal sensitive information, and trying to strong-arm a victim into returning to China – again expose the PRC’s outrageous behavior within our own borders,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said that the prosecutions “take place against a backdrop of malign activity from the government of the People’s Republic of China that includes espionage, attempts to disrupt our justice system, harassment of individuals, and ongoing efforts to steal sensitive U.S. technology.”
Huawei is one of several Chinese vendors to have been blacklisted from having its products used in U.S. networks and operators denied federal funding to purchase the company’s gear or software, as a result of national security concerns.
