24 July: Jun Wei Yeo, aka Dickson Yeo, a Singaporean citizen, has been arrested in the United States as he flew back into the country from a trip abroad. He has now pleaded guilty in a federal court to a charge of spying for China between 2015-19. According to the FBI, Dickson was using career networking sites to identify potential recruitment targets and then using a false consulting company as cover for his work. Potential recruits were invited to undertake “consultation” work with Asian companies. This is a tactic that the Chinese intelligence services have used several times before. It is usually used to gather commercially sensitive intelligence. In most cases, Yeo pretended that the work was for countries other than China so that his targets would not be suspicious. The FBI said that Yeo specifically targeted government employees and, in one case, an army officer. He was looking for targets with a high level of security clearance who might be in financial difficulty or who were dissatisfied with their work. He is due to be sentenced on 9 October.
US authorities also announced that Juan Tang, 37, a visiting researcher at a US university has been arrested in California. She was one of four people picked up earlier this week on a charge of visa fraud. They are accused of having undeclared ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Apparently, photographs have emerged of Tang in military uniform. She was working at the University of California in the Department of Radiation Oncology, but left her post in June.