A U. S. Navy sailor accused of offering a sensitive military to China pleaded guilty Tuesday in Los Angeles to conspiring with a foreign intelligence officer and taking a bribe, federal prosecutors said.
Master Wenheng Zhao, 26, first pleaded not guilty when he was charged on August 4. The Justice Department alleges that Zhao, founded at the Ventura County Naval Base north of Los Angeles, conspired to collect about $15,000 in bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for information, photographs and videos about Navy exercises, operations and installations.
The data included plans for a large-scale U. S. military training in the Indo-Pacific region, which would detail the location and timing of naval force movements, prosecutors said. The Chinese official told Zhao that the data is mandatory for maritime economic studies in order to inform investment decisions, according to the indictment.
Zhao, who also received the call from Thomas Zhao and had a U. S. security clearance, “admitted to participating in a bribery scheme to collect and pass sensitive data from the U. S. military to intelligence in violation of his official duties,” the U. S. attorney said. in a press release on Tuesday.
Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, faces a statutory sentence of 20 years in federal prison. He has been in custody since his arrest on Aug. 3.
Zhao was indicted on the same day as another California-based Navy sailor charged with similar crimes. But those are separate cases, and federal officials have not said whether the two men were courted or paid through the same Chinese intelligence officer as part of a larger operation. scheme.
Jinchao Wei, a 22-year-old assigned to the USS Essex in San Diego, is tasked with offering detailed data on the weapons systems and aircraft aboard the Essex and other amphibious attack ships that serve as small aircraft carriers. in federal court in San Diego.
Last week, a former U. S. Army intelligence officer was charged in Seattle with attempting to provide classified defense data to Chinese security facilities during the COVID-19 outbreak. Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 29, was arrested Oct. 6 at San Francisco International Airport as he arrived from Hong Kong, where he had lived since March 2020, the Justice Department said.
A federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with withholding and attempting to transmit national defense information. Seattle District Court records did not yet show an attorney representing Schmidt in the charges, and neither the U. S. Attorney’s Office nor the U. S. Attorney’s Office knew if he had an attorney.
An FBI filed in that case quoted Schmidt as telling his sister in an email that he left the U. S. because he disagreed with unspecified facets of U. S. policy.