State Department Officer Gets 4 Years in Prison for Selling Defense Secrets to China

The staffer received over $10,000 from handlers he met online in return for sending them copies of a variety of documents.
State Department Officer Gets 4 Years in Prison for Selling Defense Secrets to China
People enter the State Department building in Washington on Jan. 26, 2017. Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Eva Fu
Eva Fu
Reporter
|Updated:

A State Department staffer was sentenced on Sept. 4 to four years in prison for selling defense intelligence to individuals believed to be working for the Chinese government.

Michael Schena, 42, was a South Caribbean desk officer in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department’s Washington headquarters and held a top secret security clearance, allowing him access to information that could “cause exceptionally grave damage” to national security, according to court documents.

Eva Fu
Eva Fu
Reporter
Eva Fu is an award-winning, New York-based journalist for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. politics, U.S.-China relations, religious freedom, and human rights. Contact Eva at [email protected]
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