FBI electronics technician charged with spying for China


                       Kun Shan Chun, an FBI employee who pleaded guilty in federal court to having acted as an agent of the Chinese government.



A nearly 20-year FBI veteran with top security clearance pleaded guilty Monday to passing on confidential information, including the identity and travel patterns of a special agent, to a Chinese government official in exchange for money.


Kun Shan “Joey” Chun, 47, faces roughly two years in prison under a plea deal he hatched with Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office in exchange for his guilty plea.
Chun, who worked as an FBI electronics technician since 1997, met a man who identified himself as a Chinese government official in 2011 while traveling in Europe, Assistant US Attorney Emil Bove told Manhattan federal Magistrate Judge James Francis on Monday.
Kun Shan “Joey”
At the time, Chun had already had a long-standing and illegal tie to a Chinese tech company that had paid for prostitutes for him, and which gave his parents money, officials said.
After meeting the government official in 2011, Chun, who became a US citizen in 1985, immediately passed on information about “the identity and travel patterns of an FBI special agent” to a Chinese government official, the feds said.

A few years later, in 2014, he also passed on the organizational chart of the FBI’s New York bureau after being asked by the unnamed official about the enforcement agency’s “internal structure.”
In 2015, he also passed on photographs of the FBI’s secret technologies, which he took using his cellphone in an FBI restricted area.

“I knew it was wrong and I am sorry for my actions,” Chun said in pleading guilty to spying on behalf of China from at least 2011 to 2016.
Chun was caught by a fellow FBI agent, who posed undercover starting in 2015 as a contractor for the Department of Defense.

Chun recruited the undercover agent to hand over “sensitive information to his Chinese associates,” prosecutors said.
Chun told the uncover agent that he knew what he was doing was wrong. “I’m already in deep s–t you know cause … people that I met you know over there in China, I never disclose that, never. That’s a f—ing violation.”

“Today Joey Chun accepted responsibility for some mistakes in judgment that he deeply regrets,” his lawyer Jonthan Marvinny said in an emailed statement. “The truth is that Mr. Chun loves the United States and never intended to cause it any harm. He hopes to put this matter behind him and move forward with his life.”

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