A Chinese national was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for acting illegally within the United States as an agent of China, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
Ji Chaoqun, 31, worked at the direction of high-level intelligence officers in the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, a provincial department of the Ministry of State Security for the People’s Republic of China, the DOJ said.
According to reports, Ji came to the US on a student visa in 2013 to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later enlisted in the US Army Reserves after lying to his recruiters. Ji was arrested in 2018 and convicted last September for illegally acting as an agent for a foreign government which in this case was China’s Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security and making a false statement to the US Army.
Ji, a Chinese citizen residing in Chicago, was tasked by Xu Yanjun, a Deputy Division Director within the Ministry of State Security, with providing an intelligence officer with biographical information on certain individuals for possible recruitment by the JSSD.
The individuals included Chinese nationals who were working as engineers and scientists in the United States, some of whom worked for U.S. defense contractors, the DOJ said.
According to the DOJ, this tasking was part of an effort by the Jiangsu provincial department to obtain access to advanced aerospace and satellite technologies being developed by companies within the U.S. Xu was sentenced last year to 20 years in federal prison after being convicted in the Southern District of Ohio of conspiracy and attempting to commit economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
According to the DOJ, Ji In 2016, enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, which authorized the U.S. Armed Forces to recruit certain legal aliens whose skills are considered vital to the national interest. In his application to participate in the MAVNI program, Ji falsely stated that he had not had contact with a foreign government within the past seven years. In a subsequent interview with a U.S. Army officer, Ji again failed to disclose his relationship and contacts with a foreign intelligence officer.
In 2018, Ji had several meetings with an undercover law enforcement agent who was posing as a representative of the Ministry of State Security. During these meetings, Ji explained that with his military identification, he could visit and take photos of “Roosevelt-class” aircraft carriers, Said in the DOJ statement. Ji also explained that once he obtained his U.S. citizenship and security clearance through the MAVNI program, he would seek a job at the CIA, FBI or NASA. Ji intended to perform cybersecurity work at one of those agencies so that he would have access to all their databases, including databases that contained scientific research.
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