Two Chinese nationals who admitted working for China's Ministry of State Security, photographing Navy sites and arranging dead-drop payments, get 30 months each in the US.
The US Justice Department said on 30 October (US time) that Chinese nationals Liren "Ryan" Lai, 40, and Yuance Chen, 39, were each sentenced in the Northern District of California to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release. They had pleaded guilty, on 12 December 2025 and 20 February 2026 respectively, to conspiring to act and acting as agents of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General. According to the department, the two operated under the direction of China's Ministry of State Security from no later than May 2021; in January 2022 they arranged a roughly $10,000 "dead drop" cash payment left in a locker at a recreational facility in Livermore, California. From 2022 Chen photographed Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state and recruits and sailors inside a Southern California Navy recruiting station, collected personal information on a Navy employee and compiled profiles of potential recruitment targets. Lai travelled to the US in 2023 to give Chen a phone for covert MSS communications and in May 2025 was directed to Phoenix to arrange a roughly $20,000 cash payment. Both were arrested in an FBI operation on 27 June 2025. Courthouse News said Judge Jon Tigar handed down the sentences, that Chen has been a lawful permanent resident since 2019, and that Lai lives in China and entered the US several times on visitor visas. No Chinese response had been seen at the time of publication.
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