Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 54, a former CIA officer, has finally pleaded guilty to spying for China. Lee joined the CIA in 1994. He left the agency in 2007 and retired to Hong Kong. It was there that he was recruited by the Chinese intelligence service. He is believed to have betrayed a key CIA network in China leading to the death or imprisonment of more than 20 agents between 2010 and 2012.
Lee was first interviewed in 2012 as the CIA was trying to determine the source of the betrayal of their China network. At that time Lee admitted that Chinese agents had approached him, but he denied working for them. He remained a suspect and later that year, following a visit to Hawaii, further evidence was found that Lee was gathering information about his old CIA contacts. He admitted gathering the information, but still denied working for China. It took five more years to build a definitive case against him and bring him to a place where he could be arrested. He was finally arrested when he visited New York in January 2018. Subsequently, the CIA announced that they had found that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been deposited in bank accounts controlled by him between May 2010 and December 2013.