US: Singaporean national pleads guilty to working as Chinese spy

A Singaporean national on Friday pleaded guilty to charges of being a spy of China, the US Department of Justice said.

Jun Wei Yeo, also known as Dickson Yeo, entered a plea of guilty to one count of acting within the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign power without first notifying the attorney general.

The Chinese government uses an array of duplicity to obtain sensitive information from unsuspecting Americans,” said US Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department”s National Security Division John C Demers.

“Yeo was central to one such scheme, using career networking sites and a false consulting firm to lure Americans who might be of interest to the Chinese government. This is yet another example of the Chinese government’s exploitation of the openness of American society,” he said.

The guilty plea underscores the ways that the Chinese government continues to target Americans with access to sensitive government information, including using the Internet and non-Chinese nationals to target Americans who never leave the US, said Michael R Sherwin, Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Yeo admitted that he not only provided valuable information to Chinese intelligence but also that he knowingly recruited others in the US to do the same, said FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Timothy R Slater.

“The tactics Yeo used to target cleared individuals on professional networking social media sites are just one facet of the full court press China employs on a daily basis to obtain non-public US government information.

As per the guilty plea, Yeo began working with Chinese intelligence officers as early as 2015, initially targeting other Asian countries, but then focusing on the US.

In response to taskings from his Chinese intelligence contacts, Yeo allagedly worked to spot and assess Americans with access to valuable non-public information, including US military and government employees with high-level security clearances.

After Yeo identified American targets, he solicited them for non-public information and paid them to write reports.

Yeo told these American targets that the reports were for clients in Asia, without revealing that they were in fact destined for the Chinese government, the Department of Justice said.

At the direction of Chinese intelligence operatives, Yeo targeted US government employees and an Army officer to obtain information for the government of China.

He admitted he set up a fake consulting company to further his scheme, looked for susceptible individuals who were vulnerable to recruitment and tried to avoid detection by US authorities, said Alan Kohler, Assistant Director of the FBI”s Counterintelligence Division.