American telecom company’s IT employee leaked data to China for 10 years — it was discovered only now

Beijing has been recruiting US residents for years to carry out various espionage activities.

Ping Li, a 59-year-old U.S. citizen of Chinese descent, is at the center of a high-profile scandal. The US Department of Justice has accused him of long-term espionage activities in favor of China.

Li, who lives in Wesley Chapel, Florida, worked for a large American telecommunications company and an international IT firm after moving to the United States. Prosecutors allege that he worked with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) as an agent and passed on information ranging from cyberattack data to information about banned religious movements.

According to the investigation, in 2012, Li collected biographical data on a person associated with the Falun Gong religious movementand handed them over to the MGB within a week of receiving the assignment. Falun Gong, which has been banned in China since 1999, is not one of the country’s five officially recognized religions due to its ideological opposition to the Chinese government.

In 2015, Li allegedly collected information about his telecommunications employer after the company opened several offices in China. He completed this task within three weeks.

After the pandemic began, Li’s activity increased significantly. From May 2021 to June 2022, he fulfilled three requests from the DHS. One of them concerned information about cyberattacks on American companies linked to Chinese state groups.

While working for an international IT company, Li allegedly passed details of cybersecurity training materials to his employer, presumably so that the DHS could develop attacks that could bypass technical and cultural defenses.

The last episode of Li’s espionage activities dates back to June 2022. According to investigators, he provided the MGB with information about the owner of a property where a person who fled China for the United States lived.

Who else spied for China

• Casey Leong. A former CIA agent arrested in 2018 on charges of spying for China. Leong allegedly passed classified information to Chinese intelligence for several years.
• Jerry Chun Shing Lee. Former CIA officer arrested in 2012. Lee was accused of providing China with information about the CIA’s agent network in China, which led to the exposure and elimination of a number of American agents.
• Kevin Malory. Former employee of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Arrested in 2017 for passing classified documents to Chinese intelligence. In 2019, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Source: TheRegister, Wikipedia