State authorities in China are now patching loopholes in the national confidentiality regulations after they discovered that one of their colleagues assigned in a confidential unit sold state secrets to foreign contacts to pay off its debt incurred from crypto investment losses.
This incident prompts Chinese officials to assess their confidentiality system closely to address any weaknesses and prevent a similar situation from occurring.
Leaking Confidential Information For Crypto
China’s national security agency found that a public official working in a state-run confidential unit was found guilty of espionage, saying that the civil servant named Wang Moumou handed over sensitive information to foreigners.
The Chinese government stated that a person named Wang, who suffered losses from investing in cryptocurrency and owed a huge debt, was lured by foreign spy and sold them with state secrets. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Wang obtained spy funds equivalent to more than 1…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) November 8, 2024
According to the country’s Ministry of National Security. Wang leaked “top-secret” and “confidential state secrets” to the other party abroad, adding that Wang received over 1 million yuan worth of cryptocurrency as part of passing on vital information about the Chinese government.
Chinese officials explained that Wang resorted to such crime against the state after he incurred significant monetary losses from unsuccessful investments in digital currencies.
Start Of Espionage
The national security agency described Wang as “a good young man in the eyes of his unit and family”, believing that the losses from his crypto investments drove him to look for a part-time job in an online forum.
The Chinese agency said that “someone from abroad” communicated with him and offered him work which involved providing his contact with information such as his unit’s research progress and production tasks in exchange for crypto payment.
Wang agreed to the deal and received a substantial amount of digital money for the information he handed over to foreigners.
“Faced with the temptation of money, Wang Moumou’s bottom line of confidentiality began to loosen,” the Chinese ministry said.
According to authorities, Wang was still hesitant at the start and only gave “a small amount of internal information” to his contact in exchange for payment. However, Wang gave in after thinking that “a few photos and a few documents can be exchanged for a lot of money” , something he gravely needed to settle his debt.
Life Imprisonment
Wang will now have to spend the rest of his life in a state penitentiary after a Chinese court sentenced him to life imprisonment for his crime.
The People’s Court found Wang guilty of espionage after selling state documents for more than 1 million yuan crypto.
According to the national security agency, a “secret-level document” occasionally ended up in Wang’s workstation. They discovered that there was leniency in implementing the confidentiality regulations in his unit which allowed him to sneak sensitive documents to “foreign spy intelligence agencies”.
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