BEIJING: The Ministry of State Security has disclosed a case in which a university student engaged in espionage activities due to debt problems and then attempted to evade punishment by reporting fake leads to the ministry while trying to determine if it was investigating him.
The case was revealed in a post on the ministry’s WeChat account on Tuesday that advised people who have participated in espionage to surrender promptly. In June last year, an informant surnamed He called the ministry’s 12339 hotline and claimed to be a university student who had been approached by a foreign spy agency asking him to provide “official documents”, which he adamantly refused to do.
However, He further claimed that, to help the ministry catch the agency in the act, he had contacted the agency himself and “tricked” it into giving him tens of thousands of yuan to engage in espionage.
National security officers promptly met with He and inquired about the details. During the conversation, he was evasive and provided inconsistent answers regarding his claims of being contacted by foreign spies and duping them out of money, according to the post. Following an investigation, officers found that He was a university student known for his extravagant spending, which led him to incur significant debt at a young age. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
