How a Chinese agent used LinkedIn to hunt for targets
Jun Wei Yeo, slotxo an eager and newly selected Singaporean PhD understudy,
was no uncertainty charmed when he was welcome to give an introduction to
Chinese scholastics in Beijing in 2015.
His doctorate research was about Chinese international strategy and he was going
to find firsthand how the rising superpower tries to accomplish impact.
After his introduction, Jun Wei, otherwise called Dickson, was, as per US court
reports, drew closer by a few people who said they worked for Chinese research
organizations. They said they needed to pay him to give "political reports and data".
They would later indicate precisely what they needed: "talk" - bits of gossip and
insider information.
He before long acknowledged they were Chinese knowledge operators yet stayed
in contact with them, a sworn articulation says. He was first approached to
concentrate on nations in South East Asia yet later, their advantage went to
the US government.
That was the manner by which Dickson Yeo put off on a way to turning into
a Chinese operator - one who might wind up utilizing the expert systems
administration site LinkedIn, a phony counseling organization and spread as
an inquisitive scholastic to bait in American targets.
After five years, on Friday, in the midst of profound strains between the US
and China and a decided crackdown from Washington on Beijing's covert agents,
Yeo confessed in a US court to being an unlawful specialist of an outside force".
The 39-year-old faces as long as 10 years in jail.