FBI Tech Pleads Guilty to Being Chinese Agent

(CN) — A former FBI electronics technician with top-secret security clearance admitted Monday that he was an agent of the Chinese government and accessed sensitive information at the request of a Beijing official.

Kun Shan Chun aka Joey Chun pleaded guilty early Monday to a charge of acting as an agent of the People's Republic of China without notifying the U.S. Attorney General, according to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Chun, 46, began working for the FBI in the late 1990s as an electronics technician, and was granted top-secret security clearance and access to sensitive and sometimes classified information.

Prosecutors say he collected sensitive FBI information on multiple occasions and gave it to a Chinese government official and other Chinese nationals.

Chun, a naturalized U.S. citizen from China, was introduced to the unnamed Chinese government official during a trip to Italy and France in 2011.

They held multiple meetings after that, during which Chun reportedly disclosed the identity and "potential travel patterns" of an FBI special agent, according to a press release from Bharara's office.

Chun then lied the FBI during an investigation by failing to disclose his contacts with the Chinese government official and others, according to prosecutors.

He later sent the foreign government official an FBI organizational chart and pictures of documents summarizing "sensitive details regarding multiple surveillance technologies used by the FBI," Bharara says.

Chun was eventually taken down by an undercover FBI employee, who recorded conversations in March and June 2015, during which Chun said his Chinese associates would be interested in sensitive information from the U.S. government.

He was arrested by the FBI on March 16 of this year, and later confessed to having taken steps to collect sensitive FBI information at the request of the Chinese government official that he met with. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 2.

"Americans who act as unauthorized foreign agents commit a federal offense that betrays our nation and threatens our security," Bharara said in a statement. "And when the perpetrator is an FBI employee, like Kun Shan Chun, the threat is all the more serious and the betrayal all the more duplicitous."

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