By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. State Department employee was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday for conspiring to collect and transmit national defense information to individuals he believed to be working for China’s government, the Justice Department said.
Michael Schena, 42, of Alexandria, Virginia, worked at State Department headquarters in Washington. He held a top secret security clearance and had access to information up to the secret level, the Justice Department said.
Beginning in April 2022, Schena communicated with people he met online through various platforms and provided them sensitive U.S. government information in exchange for money, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Two of these individuals represented themselves as employees of international consulting companies, the Justice Department said. Believing that they were working on behalf of China’s government, Schena continued his relationship with them, the Justice Department said.
In August 2024, Schena met an individual at a hotel in Peru who provided Schena $10,000 and a cellphone that was intended to be used for Schena to receive tasks and transmit information, prosecutors said.
In October 2024, while at work, Schena used the cellphone he received in Peru to photograph and transmit at least four classified documents that contained national defense information and which were classified as secret,according to prosecutors.
Surveillance video captured Schena again using the cellphone to photograph seven documents marked as “secret” that contained national defense information in February this year, the Justice Department said, adding FBI agents seized the phone before he could transmit those documents and arrested him.
A representative of Schena could not immediately be contacted.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
