ILLEGAL AGENT

Singaporean Man Pleads Guilty to Spying on the U.S. for China

Jun Wei Yeo admitted he was an “illegal agent of a foreign power” in a Washington, D.C. court.

A Singaporean man living in Washington, D.C. pleaded guilty to espionage on Friday. Ju Wei Yeo, who went by the name Dickson Yeo, admitted to being an “illegal agent of a foreign power,” working for Chinese intelligence for around five years, according to CNN. His job was to try to recruit Americans with access to sensitive information over the internet through a fake consultancy firm and commissioning them to write reports which he passed on to Beijing. “The Chinese Government uses an array of duplicity to obtain sensitive information from unsuspecting Americans,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement. “Yeo was central to one such scheme, using career networking sites and a false consulting firm to lure Americans who might be of interest to the Chinese government.” The plea comes amid a crackdown on Chinese operatives in the U.S.