Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, of Honolulu, a former CIA officer, was sentenced Wednesday for conspiring to deliver national defense information to the People’s Republic of China, officials stated.
Ma was arrested in August 2020 after admitting to an undercover FBI employee that he had facilitated the provision of classified information to intelligence officers employed by China’s Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB).
According to court documents, Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 until 1989. His blood relative (identified as co-conspirator #1 or CC #1 in court documents), who is deceased, also worked for the CIA from 1967 until 1983.
As CIA officers, both men held Top Secret security clearances that granted them access to sensitive and classified CIA information, and both signed nondisclosure agreements.
As Ma admitted in the plea agreement, SSSB intelligence officers contacted Ma in March 2001, more than ten years after he left the CIA, and asked Ma to set up a meeting between CC #1 and the SSSB.
Ma convinced CC #1 to agree, and they met with SSSB intelligence officers in a Hong Kong hotel room for three days.
During the meetings, CC #1 provided the SSSB with a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information in return for $50,000 in cash. Ma and CC #1 also agreed to continue to assist the SSSB.
In March 2003, while living in Hawaii, Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu Field Office.
The FBI, aware of Ma’s ties to Chinese intelligence, hired Ma as part of a ruse to monitor and investigate his activities and contacts with the SSSB. Ma worked part time at an offsite location for the FBI from August 2004 until October 2012.
According to the plea agreement, the SSSB tasked Ma with asking CC #1 to identify four people who might be of interest to the SSSB from photographs in February 2006.
Ma convinced CC #1 to provide the identities of at least two of the individuals, whose identities were and remain classified U.S. national defense information.
Ma confessed that he knowingly and willfully conspired with CC #1 and SSSB intelligence officers to communicate and transmit information that he knew would be used to injure the United States or to advantage the Chinese.
In court documents and at today’s sentencing hearing, the government noted that Ma was convicted of a years-long conspiracy to commit espionage, a serious breach of national security that caused the government to expend substantial investigative resources.
The government also noted that Ma’s role in the conspiracy was to facilitate the exchange of information between CC #1 and the SSSB, which consisted of classified CIA information that CC #1 had obtained between 1967 and 1983.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Ma must cooperate with the United States for the rest of his life, including by submitting to debriefings by U.S. government agencies.
At the sentencing hearing, government counsel told the court that Ma has been cooperative and has taken part in multiple interview sessions with government agents.
Ma has received a 10-year prison sentence with five years of supervised release.
The FBI’s Honolulu and Los Angeles Field Offices investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ken Sorenson and Craig Nolan for the District of Hawaii, and Trial Attorneys Scott Claffee and Leslie Esbrook of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section prosecuted the case.