A Singaporean PhD candidate who confessed to spying for China in the United States but later cooperated with U.S. counterintelligence agents will be set free in January 2021.
Jun Wei Yeo, also known as Dickson Yeo, was arrested by FBI agents in November 2019 at an airport in the country. Court documents show Yeo decided to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement authorities after his arrest.
He admitted to spying for China from 2015 to 2019. He said he was recruited in 2015 while he was studying for his PhD at the National University of Singapore. He was recruited on one of his trips to Beijing by Chinese intelligence agents.
Yeo, 39, pled guilty in July to one count of operating illegally as a foreign agent, a crime with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
He admitted to using his political consultancy, which he established on orders of his Chinese spy masters, in the U.S. as a front to collect information for Chinese intelligence services. He also admitted to operating illegally as a foreign agent in the U.S.
As a Chinese spy, Yeo's job was to spot and assess Americans with access to valuable non-public information such as U.S. military and government employees with high-level security clearances.
Yeo paid some of those individuals as much as $2,000 to write reports he said were for clients in Asia. Instead, Yeo sent these reports to the Chinese government. Among the information he passed along were those about a U.S. military aircraft program, the U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and on a Cabinet member.
Yeo freely admitted to the FBI he was fully aware he was working for Chinese intelligence and had met agents in China dozens of times.
Federal prosecutors arguing the case against Yeo before Judge Tanya Sue Chutkan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia said they would have sought a harsher sentence for Yeo but for his cooperation.
The 14-month sentence imposed by Chutkan during a virtual hearing in Washington was two months shorter than the punishment recommended by prosecutors. Chutkan took into account Yeo's cooperation with the government, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the U.S. prison system.
Yeo will receive credit for the jail time already served, which means he should be released by January 2021. He will be deported to Singapore after he completes his sentence.
Yeo acknowledged he had spied for China and said he takes full responsibility for he's done. Despite this, he still remains loyal to China.
