China aiming for members of US services on social networks in spy efforts of “virtual spying”

The Chinese intelligence officer who convinced Thomas Zhao to hand over sensitive information about the US army, it seems that he knows that the 24-year-old US Navy officer has a passion for the stock market.

The agent joined Zhaou in a stock trading group on the Chinese wechat media network, CBS News found out in interviews with people involved in the case. But they talk about investment strategies soon turned into sensitive areas, including issues about naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean and designing for radar installations.

The Zhao case represents a new dimension of Chinese concealed activities called by counterbalances of “virtual spy”. The practice, in which Chinese intelligence officers aim to members of the army and others of great interest in social media, draw them in correspondence and draw sensitive information from them, is a threat to growing, CBS News officials said.

“They will go beyond every stone to try to collect what I can,” said Kevin Vordran, who runs the FBI -Ay Division against intelligence, he told CBS News in a rare television interview. “They certainly try to target as many people as possible.”

During the two years, the Chinese Intelligence Officer of the Intelligence paid Zhao, a US citizen and a naval engineer, about $ 15,000 to photograph the videos of restricted areas in the base of southern California, where he worked, court records revealed.

With its relatively low rank, as well as low -level safety approval, Zhao may have seemed a unlikely goal. However, Vordran and other American officials told CBS News to work for the Chinese government of the trial of a trial of professional networking websites, including LinkedIn, to seduce a number of US service members and others who hold the US government’s safety approval to convert sensitive information.

“In the places of professional networking, members of the army, former members of the army, list their summates,” Vornran said. “This exposes their expertise. And through that, it makes the target of an intelligence service easy to achieve.”

Linkedina spokesman did not answer the question of whether Chinese intelligence officials used a platform to recognize potential goals, but said in a statement that false accounts were violating the company’s service conditions.

“Our teams use various automated technologies, combined with a team of trained professionals for investigations and reporting members to help stop bad actors and keep their experiences to LinkedIn Professional,” a spokesman said.

Tactics are a low risk and high reward – a sign of “virtual spying” China They started leaning when Covid made it difficult for spies to travel abroad, according to counterparty officials.

“The intelligence clerk can sit behind his table in China and contact many individuals at once,” said Ryan Norris, a special agent at the Navy Criminal Investigation Service. “They turn to as many people as possible and hope to get some answer.”

In the last two years, the federal implementation of the law has established a dozen such cases and charges the four members of the service employed by the suspect’s secret agents of China. Vordran said that given the difficulty in the police of this type of reach, he is worried that the number could be far higher.

“We are exploring everyone that we can identify and a predefined investigation,” Vordran said. “Those we don’t know are those who concern me and hold me.”

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy denied the knowledge of the Zhao case and did not deal with the question of whether his intelligence officers contacted US internet services and seeking sensitive information.

“China hopes that the United States will cease to overcome the so-called risk of” Chinese spies “and stop the exaggeration of” Chinese threat theories “, and inject greater stability than Chinese-US instead of setting up obstacles,” said the embassy spokesman in the statement.

Light money

In August 2023, agents with FBI and NCIS descended into the naval base of the Ventura district, arrested Zhao and took him to a small room for testing. The test video, obtained by CBS News, shows that Zhao admitted that he had sent sensitive military information to the individual he had met online.

While Zhao said that an individual seems “fish”, he doesn’t seem to know he was involved in a Chinese intelligence clerk. And as he thought about crossing photos of what he did as an easy way to make money, he stopped sending all the classified information.

“When I tried to break the relationship with him, he’s already late,” Zhao said in an interrogation, saying federal agents to feel “trapped.”

After the examination, Zhao was arrested. He later declared himself guilty of allegations of bribery and conspiracy, and currently withstanding a federal sentence of 27 months. Prosecutors found that his actions were not increased to the level of spying. Still, Norris said he believed Zhao’s actions represent treacherous.

“He absolutely betrayed his country,” Norris said, who questioned Zhao during the test. “I think in the last two years he has had a relationship he knew he was nasty and I think he was finally caught in what he was doing.”

Tarek Shawky, Zhao’s lawyer, said his client was to some extent the victim of a fraud. He said their conversations on social media discovered that the Chinese intelligence clerk sought to build a level of trust before requested by sensitive information.

“At some point, I think it’s a human condition that you want to suspend a little of your better judgment because of that human relationship,” Shawky said. “That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

In an interview with CBS News, Zhao’s wife, Jianyu Ren, said her husband admitted that he was wrong, but she denied that she would ever deliberately sell her country.

“That’s not him,” Ren said. “If he knew that person worked for the Chinese government or anyone in China, he would not have done so.”

contributed to this report.