Two Men Sentenced in U.S. China Intelligence Case

Liren Ryan Lai and Yuance Chen were sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty in a case involving efforts to recruit U.S. military personnel for Chinese intelligence, the Justice Department said. A federal court in California imposed the sentences on October 30, 2026. The men pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as agents of a foreign government without notifying the attorney general and acting as agents without the required notification. They were arrested in June 2025. The department said their activities supported China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s foreign intelligence service. According to the Justice Department’s account of court records, Lai and Chen began working for the ministry no later than May 2021. Lai recruited Chen and initially connected him with intelligence officers; Chen later received assignments directly from his handler. The department said the pair arranged cash payments in exchange for information related to U.S. national security. One operation involved $10,000 placed in a designated location for collection, a method known as a dead drop. A separate later operation involved about $20,000,...