A Florida IT worker who admitted to acting as a “cooperative contact” for the Chinese government was sentenced Monday to four years in prison, federal authorities announced.
Fla. IT Worker Gets 4 Years In Chinese Spying Case : Four-Year Sentence for Ping Li
U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday handed down a 48-month prison sentence to Ping Li, 59, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen from Wesley Chapel, Florida. In addition to the prison term, Li will serve three years of supervised release and must pay a $250,000 fine. The judgment also bars him from employment granting access to sensitive government information after his release.
Li pled guilty in August to conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent for China, acknowledging that he secretly worked for the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) for over a decade, gathering information on U.S. telecommunications companies and Chinese democracy advocates.
Feeding Information to China’s Intelligence Agency
Prosecutors alleged that Li’s relationship with the MSS began in 2012 when he was asked to collect data on the Falun Gong religious movement, banned in China, and pro-democracy activists in the U.S. Li admitted to providing the MSS with biographical details and names of individuals associated with these groups.
