FBI employee pleads guilty to acting as Chinese agent

Kun Shan Chun admitted in federal court on Monday that between 2011 and 2016, he handed over sensitive information to a Chinese official on numerous occasions.

The disgraced former FBI electronics technician had used his top secret clearance to disseminate confidential information to a Chinese official in return thousands of dollars in cash, some of which was used to pay prostitutes and cover travel expenses to China, according to the criminal complaint.

Chun, who also goes by the name Joey Chun, worked for the FBI from 1997 until his arrest last March 2016. During an FBI investigation into his activities in 2015, Chun unknowingly told an undercover investigator that he could pass sensitive information to his Chinese contact in exchange for payment, according to a statement released by the US Department of Justice.

The criminal complaint says that the defendant shared travel plans of an FBI agent, passed along pictures of documents located in a restricted area inside the FBI's New York Field Office, and disclosed details about surveillance methods and technologies employed by the FBI.

"Americans who act as unauthorised foreign agents commit a federal offense that betrays our nation and threatens our security. And when the perpetrator is an FBI employee, like Kun Shan Chun, the threat is all the more serious and the betrayal all the more duplicitous," Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said.

Chun, 46, became a naturalised American citizen in 1985, just five years after he moved to the US from his homeland China. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December, where he could face up to 10 years in prison.