Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a 71-year-old former Central Intelligence Agency officer, CIA, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying on behalf of the Chinese government.
Ma, who was arrested in August 2020, admitted to an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, agent that he sold classified U.S. intelligence to China. A naturalized U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong, Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 to 1989 before later taking a position at the FBI.
His plea agreement requires him to cooperate fully with U.S. authorities for the rest of his life, including undergoing polygraph tests during government debriefings.
During his espionage activities, Ma reportedly worked with a relative, who was also a former CIA agent, to leak U.S. secrets to Chinese intelligence. In a recorded meeting in Hong Kong, Ma was filmed counting $50,000 in exchange for the sensitive information he provided.
Ma’s collaborator, believed to be his brother David, died before facing prosecution. On Wednesday, a court in Hawaii sentenced Ma to 10 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.
Ma’s alleged spying for China is believed to have begun in March 2001, with a three-day debriefing in a Hong Kong hotel by officers of the Shanghai State Security Bureau, SSSB, the city’s aggressive subsidiary of China’s Ministry of State Security, MSS.
READ ALSO : FBI may quiz Trump seeking truth about ‘bullet’ wound
After Ma moved back to Hawaii in 2002, he sought employment with the FBI with the intent to regain access to classified information in order to provide it to the MSS. Though he applied for a position as a special agent, at age 49 he was over the age limit, instead he was hired by the FBI’s Honolulu Field Office as a linguist tasked with translating Chinese language documents. However, the FBI had already uncovered his betrayal and hired him as part of a sting operation to monitor his activities. During his hiring by the FBI in 2004, he is alleged to have passed a polygraph examination which asked questions regarding foreign contacts and personal loyalties. The day before starting his new job with the FBI, Ma called a suspected accomplice to inform them he would now be working full-time for “the other side.”
Over the following six years with the FBI, Ma regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents, bringing many of them with him on frequent trips to China with the intent to provide them to his handlers. Customs declarations indicated that Ma often returned from China with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, such as a new set of golf clubs.
David Ma is believed to have continued to maintain contact with the MSS, staying in contact with Alex and MSS handlers while he embedded himself in the Chinese immigrant community in Los Angeles. In one instance, Alex’s wife Amy Ma, also born in Hong Kong, was used as a courier, flying to Shanghai and delivering an encrypted laptop computer to handlers from the SSSB.
FBI Honolulu Special Agent-in-Charge Steven Merrill issued a stern warning, stating, “let it be a message to anyone thinking of betraying their country—no matter how much time passes, justice will be served.”
Credible News.ng
