US telecom employee gets four-year sentence over spying for China

A former US telecom company employee who provided information about Chinese dissidents and Falun Gong members to China was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday, the Justice Department said.

Ping Li, 59, of Wesley Chapel, Florida, admitted in a plea agreement to acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government, the department said in a statement.

Li, who emigrated to the United States from China, provided corporate information to China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and personal details about an individual affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement who lived in Florida.

The Falun Gong movement is banned in China.

 The US Justice Department said Li worked for a major US telecom company and an international information technology company. The companies were not identified in court documents but according to press reports they were Verizon and InfoSys, respectively.

"Fom at least as early as 2012, (Li) served as a cooperative contact working at the direction of officers of the MSS to obtain information of interest to the (Chinese) government," the Justice Department said.

"Li obtained a wide variety of information at the request of the MSS, including information concerning Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy advocates, members of the Falun Gong religious movement, and US-based non-governmental organizations."

A 71-year-old Chinese man was sentenced to 20 months in prison in California last week for taking part in a plot targeting the Falun Gong in the United States.

John Chen, of Los Angeles, was also convicted of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government.

China calls the Falun Gong movement, founded in 1992, an "evil cult, outlawing it in 1999 after 10,000 members peacefully demonstrated outside a government building in Beijing.