The Sydney Morning Herald
A Chinese-born US engineer has been jailed for 24 years, after being convicted of trying to export sensitive information to China.
Chi Mak, who worked for a US company with several navy contracts, was convicted last May of trying to export intelligence about silent submarines, in a plot involving four members of his family.
Mak, 65, was also fined $US50,000 ($55,000) by US District Judge Cormac Carney, who said the lengthy sentence was intended to send a message to China's intelligence services.
"We will never know the full extent of the damage that Mr Mak has done to our national security," Judge Carney wrote in a statement of reasons filed in conjunction with the sentencing.
"A high-end ... sentence will provide a strong deterrent to the PRC (People's Republic of China) not to send its agents here to steal American military secrets."
Mak was convicted following a trial in Santa Ana, 50 kilometres south-east of Los Angeles, last year.
He was found guilty of two counts of attempting to send sensitive material to China, acting as a foreign agent without notifying the US government and making false statements to federal agents.
Mak was arrested in October 2005 after agents swooped on two relatives at Los Angeles Airport as they prepared to board a flight to Hong Kong.
Prosecutors said the duo were caught with a disk containing sensitive encrypted data on US submarines hidden in a English-language CD course.
View full article