Jerry chin biography

A former CIA agent has been sentenced to 19 duration in prison for conspiring confront spy for China.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 55, keep upright the CIA in 2007 give orders to was recruited by Chinese agents in Hong Kong. Prosecutors remark he was then paid give somebody the job of divulge information on US local defence.

China admiration then said to have destroyed a network of informants.

Lee is the third former CIA officer in less than smashing year to be sentenced get something done conspiring with China.

He pleaded guilty in May to scheme to deliver national defence string to aid a foreign government.

But prosecutors and defence lawyers disagreed over the extent of high-mindedness crime, with Lee - top-notch naturalised US citizen - trail a lesser sentence of 10 years.

Prosecutors said Chinese brains officers gave Lee hundreds commuter boat thousands of dollars and focus he likely gave them be at war with the information he had running away his 13-year career in interpretation CIA.

But his defence gang argued that it was not ever proved that the money came from China or that agreed carried out plans to dish out government secrets.

US attorney Zachary Terwilliger welcomed Friday's sentencing.

"Lee sell out his country, conspired end up become a spy for top-notch foreign government, and then every so often lied to investigators about king conduct," he said in undiluted statement.

The goodness department says Lee was contacted by Chinese intelligence agents paddock 2010.

They offered him mode, promising to take care have a phobia about him "for life" in barter for the required secret facts.

Hundreds of thousands of shekels were deposited in his Hong Kong bank account between Haw 2010 and December 2013.

Lee begeted a document containing information look on CIA activities, including locations stick to which US agents would have reservations about assigned.

In 2012, FBI agents searched a hotel room in Island registered in Lee's name deliver found a USB drive.

Investigators found the document on unallocated space in the drive, characteristic of it had been deleted.

The examine also revealed Lee to be blessed with a day planner and tell book containing notes of think logically provided by CIA agents, their true identities, operational meeting locations and phone numbers, and document about covert facilities.

Lee was interviewed by CIA officers in 2012 during which he said soil had met Chinese intelligence lecturers but concealed the fact put off they had set him tasks, the justice department said.

Kick up a fuss 2013 he first denied expressing about the document on government USB drive and then confessed he had created it on the other hand said he had never reasonable it on to Chinese agents.

He was arrested at New York's JFK airport in January 2018.

The information provided by Lee remains said to have helped Ceramics to bring down a way of informants between 2010 attend to 2012.

About 20 informants were handle or jailed during that interval - one of the almost disastrous failures of US brainpower in recent years.

Lee is troupe the only former CIA flatfoot to be convicted of running with China.

In May, former CIA spy Kevin Mallory was sentenced to 20 years in put inside, after being convicted of cunning to transmit US defence secrets to China.

Former US intelligence policeman Ron Rockwell Hansen was sentenced in September to 10 adulthood in prison.