State authorities in China are now working to plug loopholes in national secrecy regulations after discovering that one of her colleagues had been assigned to a secret unit Selling state secrets To foreign contacts to repay their debts incurred from investment losses in cryptocurrencies.
This incident prompted Chinese officials to closely evaluate their secrecy system to address any vulnerabilities and prevent a similar situation from occurring.
Leaking confidential information related to cryptocurrencies
China’s National Security Agency has found a public official working in a secret state-run unit guilty of espionage, saying the government employee named Wang Momo had handed over sensitive information to foreigners.
The Chinese government said that a person named Wang, who had suffered losses from investing in cryptocurrencies and was in huge debt, was lured by a foreign spy and sold state secrets. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Wang received spy money equivalent to more than 1…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) November 8, 2024
According to the country’s Ministry of National Security. Wang leaked “top secret state secrets” to the other party abroad, adding that Wang received more than 1 million yuan in cryptocurrencies as part of passing vital information about the Chinese government.
Chinese officials explained that Wang resorted to such a crime against the state after suffering significant financial losses due to his unsuccessful investments in digital currencies.
The beginning of espionage
The NSA described Wang as “a good young man in the eyes of his unit and his family,” believing that losses from his cryptocurrency investments led him to seek a part-time job on an online forum.
The Chinese agency said he was contacted by an “outside person” who offered him a job that involved providing his contact with information such as his unit’s research progress and production tasks in exchange for payment in cryptocurrencies.
Wang agreed to the deal and received a large sum of digital money in exchange for the information he handed over to the foreigners.
“Faced with the temptation of money, Wang Momo’s minimum level of secrecy began to decline,” the Chinese ministry said.
According to authorities, Wang was still initially reluctant and only provided “a small amount of inside information” to his contact in exchange for payment. However, Wang gave up after believing that “some photos and some documents could be exchanged for a lot of money”, something he desperately needed to settle his debts.
Life imprisonment
Wang will now have to spend the rest of his life in a government prison after a Chinese court sentenced him to life imprisonment for his crime.
The People’s Court convicted Wang of espionage after selling government documents for more than 1 million yuan in cryptocurrency.
According to the NSA, a “secret document” sometimes ended up at Wang’s workstation. They discovered that his unit’s confidentiality regulations were lax, allowing him to leak sensitive documents to “foreign spy intelligence agencies.”
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