A California man accused of spying for China was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday.
Xuehua “Edward” Peng, 56, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for China in November. He was accused of completing dead drops involving a double agent and tens of thousands of dollars in cash, then passing on the information to Chinese intelligence.
“This case exposed one of the ways that Chinese intelligence officers work to collect classified information from the United States without having to step foot in this country,” John Demers, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement Tuesday.
The double agent operation began in 2015, according to the criminal complaint.
Peng made at least six dead drops, which included one dry run, from June 2015 to June 2018. In at least four of the dead drops, a method of spycraft used to exchange information without individuals meeting, Peng left $10,000 to $20,000 in cash in envelopes hidden in hotel rooms in California and Georgia. He would then leave a room key for the double agent, who would retrieve the cash and leave a secure digital card with classified information, which Peng would later come back for, the complaint said.
The complaint said at the U.S. government “carefully selected” which information to pass on to Peng but did not disclose what classified information was given to him.
The FBI secretly filmed at least two of the exchanges and monitored his discussions with Chinese intelligence officers about when and where to book the hotel rooms and when to travel to China.
In his plea agreement, Peng said he was approached by a Ministry of State Security official when he was on a business trip in 2015 and asked to partake in the dead drops.
“I was never informed of the contents of these devices and at no time learned what information was stored on them,” Peng said in the plea agreement.
Peng also acknowledged that China paid him at least $30,000 to act as a courier.
