Former Verizon employee gets four-year sentence for sharing cyber secrets with Chinese government

A 59-year-old IT worker living in Florida was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday for sharing sensitive information with the Chinese government’s intelligence agency. 

Ping Li, a U.S. citizen living in Wesley Chapel, pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiring to act as an agent of the People’s Republic of China and will have to pay a $250,000 fine. 

Dating back to at least 2012, Li shared troves of data with the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the country’s civilian intelligence agency. 

Li reportedly worked for two decades at Verizon before moving to Infosys, the second-largest IT company in India. He served as a “cooperative contact” that obtained information the MSS asked for, the Department of Justice said, leaking information about Chinese dissidents, pro-democracy advocates and members of the Falun Gong religious movement, as well as sensitive cybersecurity information. 

“In May 2021, an MSS officer requested information from Li concerning hacking events targeting U.S. companies, including a widely publicized hacking of a major U.S. company by the Chinese government. Within four days, Li responded with the requested information,” the Justice Department said. 

In March 2022, a Chinese officer asked Li for information, including “materials relating to cybersecurity training,” about his new employer. He provided the information that same day, prosecutors said. The incident also involved emails from MSS officers “discussing hacking tactics that could be employed.”

Court documents show the MSS handler asked Li to obtain information about the Solarwinds cyberattack on the U.S. government in 2021. 

Li was able to send the information to the agency through anonymous Gmail and Yahoo accounts and often traveled to China to meet with MSS officers. 

He also provided personal information about Chinese dissidents and sent biographical data to the agency about an individual affiliated with Falun Gong residing in St. Petersburg, Florida. In June 2022, Li provided the MSS with information about someone who fled China for the U.S. 

Li was arrested on July 20 and initially lied about the information he provided to the MSS, but after being shown copies of emails he had exchanged with one of his handlers, he admitted to working with them. 

“He further admitted that he had shared cybersecurity materials internal to his employer, which he knew he was not permitted to share," prosecutors said.

Following the four-year sentence, Li will serve three years of supervised release. 

For years, China’s government has focused on breaching telecommunications companies around the world. U.S. officials have expressed outrage in recent weeks about breaches by the Chinese group Salt Typhoon of Verizon, AT&T, Lumen Technologies and T-Mobile.

Beijing-affiliated hackers used their access to U.S. telecoms to allegedly target data from phones used by President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance and staff members of Vice President Kamala Harris.