A federal judge has sentenced a former U.S. Army reservist to eight years in prison for providing China with information on people who could possibly be recruited to spy on the United States for the Asian nation.
Ji Chaoqun, 31, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman, the Justice Department said in a release. Ji was arrested in 2018 and convicted in September on several charges connected to his work for the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, a provincial department of China's Ministry of State Security.
The Chinese national arrived in the United States on Aug. 28, 2013, to study, receiving his master's degree in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in December 2015, court documents state.
According to prosecutors, Ji was formally registered in China as an overseas agent in January 2014.
During Ji's two-trial, evidence showed Xu Yanjun, a career intelligence officer now jailed in the United States, was Ji's handler and had tasked him with gathering the biographical information on those who could be recruited to act as spies.
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