US court hands 10-year jail, lifetime of polygraph tests to ex-CIA agent who spied for China

Former CIA officer Alexander Yuk Ching Ma was sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying for the Chinese government. The 71-year-old was arrested back in August 2020 after he admitted to an undercover FBI agent that he sold US secrets to China. Ma was a US citizen born in Hong Kong.

The former official served in the CIA from 1982 to 1989. He eventually worked for the FBI at the later stage of his career. Part of his guilty plea agreement states that Ma must cooperate with prosecutors “for the rest of his life, including by submitting to debriefings by US government agencies”.

The plea deal also requires the former agent to submit polygraph tests during those debriefings, the Associated Press reported. During the sentencing hearing on Wednesday, lawyers told the court that Ma has been cooperative throughout the process. The former spy has already taken part in “multiple interview sessions with government agents”.

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How did he go about it?

Official told the court that Ma collaborated with a relative who was also a CIA agent. Both the officials used to supply secrets to intelligence officers who were employed by the Shanghai State Security Bureau. One of the meetings in Hong Kong which was recorded on tape showed Ma counting $50,000 which he received for sharing secrets.

In 2004, when Ma was living in Hawaii, he took a job at FBI’s Honolulu office as a contract linguist. The federal agency was aware of his espionage activities and “hired Ma as part of a ruse to monitor and investigate his activities and contacts”, prosecutors told the court on Wednesday.

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Ma’s collaborator in the whole operation was his brother, who died before he was prosecuted. Ma was eventually jailed for 10 years, as agreed with prosecutors, followed by five years of supervised release. “Let it be a message to anyone else thinking of doing the same,” FBI Honolulu Special Agent-in-Charge Steven Merrill said in a statement obtained by the Associated press. “No matter how long it takes, or how much time passes, you will be brought to justice,”  the statement further reads.