TAMPA, Fla.—A Florida engineer has pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent to collect intelligence on dissidents and U.S. nonprofits and firms.
Li Ping, a 59-year-old U.S. citizen born in China, on Aug. 23 admitted to conspiring to act as a Chinese agent since at least 2012.
Under the direction of the Ministry of State Security, China’s top intelligence gathering agency, Li collected a wide range of information on the targets of the Chinese regime, including pro-democracy activists, practitioners of the persecuted faith group Falun Gong, and his former employer, U.S. telecom giant Verizon, court filings and his LinkedIn profile show.
The court document also said he discussed hacking tactics with a Chinese intelligence officer and provided cybersecurity training materials from his current employer at the officer’s request.
Li faces up to 5 years in prison along with a maximum $250,000 fine if convicted. He would also be asked to make restitution to any victims of the offenses according to the plea agreement.
The sentencing hearing is expected to take place in 70-90 days.
The case is part of Beijing’s ongoing efforts against its targets such as Falun Gong—a meditation discipline that teaches truthfulness compassion tolerance—over the past 25 years using torture propaganda detention forced organ harvesting among other methods.
One of Li’s earliest assignments in 2012 was collecting information regarding lawsuits that Falun Gong practitioners planned against Chinese state government officials according to court filings.