LOS ANGELES — A U.S. Navy sailor charged with providing sensitive military information to China pleaded guilty in Los Angeles on Tuesday to conspiring with a overseas intelligence officer and receiving a bribe, federal prosecutors stated.
Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, initially pleaded no longer guilty when he was once charged Aug. 4. The Justice Department alleges that Zhao, founded at Naval Base Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, conspired to acquire just about $15,000 in bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in change for information, pictures and movies of involving Navy workout routines, operations and amenities.
The information incorporated plans for a large-scale U.S. military workout within the Indo-Pacific area, which detailed the site and timing of naval power actions, prosecutors stated. The Chinese officer informed Zhao the information was once wanted for maritime financial analysis to tell funding choices, in accordance to the indictment.
Zhao, who additionally went by means of the title Thomas Zhao and held a U.S. safety clearance, “admitted he engaged in a corrupt scheme to collect and transmit sensitive U.S. military information to the intelligence officer in violation of his official duties,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated in a news free up Tuesday.
Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, faces a statutory most penalty of two decades in federal jail. He has been in custody since his arrest on Aug. 3.
Zhao was once charged at the identical day as some other California-based Navy sailor who’s accused of identical crimes. But they’re separate circumstances, and federal officers have not stated if the 2 have been courted or paid by means of the similar Chinese intelligence officer as a part of a bigger scheme.
Jinchao Wei, a 22-year-old assigned to the San Diego-based USS Essex, is charged with providing detailed information at the guns methods and airplane aboard the Essex and different amphibious attack ships that act as small airplane carriers. He pleaded no longer guilty in federal courtroom in San Diego.
Last week, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer was once charged in Seattle with making an attempt to supply categorised protection information to the Chinese safety products and services all over the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sgt. Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 29, was once arrested Oct. 6 at San Francisco International Airport as he arrived from Hong Kong, the place he have been residing since March 2020, the Justice Department stated.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with retention and tried supply of nationwide protection information. U.S. District Court information in Seattle didn’t but listing an legal professional representing Schmidt at the fees, and neither the U.S. legal professional’s workplace nor the federal public defender’s workplace had information about whether or not he had a attorney.
An FBI declaration filed within the case quoted Schmidt as telling his sister in an electronic mail that he left the U.S. as a result of he disagreed with unspecified facets of American coverage.
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