Two nationals of China who admitted working in the United States for China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) were each sentenced on Friday, October 30, 2026, to 30 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Liren “Ryan” Lai, 40, and Yuance Chen, 39, were sentenced in the Northern District of California for conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government, and for acting as agents of a foreign government without first notifying the U.S. Attorney General, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Agence France-Presse and the Indo-Asian News Service reported the same sentences the same day.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
What the two men admitted doing
According to court documents cited by the Justice Department, Lai and Chen began acting as agents of the MSS no later than May 2021. The MSS is China's principal civilian intelligence service, responsible for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Lai recruited Chen into the scheme and at first served as the intermediary between Chen and MSS intelligence officers; Chen later received his assignments directly from MSS officers. AFP reported that Lai had arrived in the United States on a tourist visa and that Chen was a permanent resident — the two statuses that, prosecutors say, let the pair live and move inside the country while taking orders from a foreign intelligence service.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
The Livermore dead drop: a backpack of cash in a locker
As detailed in the government's sentencing memorandum, in January 2022 Lai and Chen facilitated a clandestine cash payment of approximately $10,000. While the two men were in China, they coordinated with people in the United States to leave a backpack containing the cash inside a locker at a recreational facility in Livermore, California, in the East Bay area east of San Francisco. The Justice Department explained that such arrangements are known as “dead drops” — they allow intelligence operatives to transfer money or information without ever meeting the intended recipient face to face.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
Photographing the Navy — from Bremerton to a Southern California recruiting station
The work went well beyond moving cash. Beginning in 2022, at the direction of Lai and MSS officers, Chen gathered information about U.S. military installations and personnel. That included obtaining photographs of Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Washington — one of the U.S. Navy's most important Pacific bases — and photographs and videos of military recruits and active-duty sailors inside a Navy recruiting station in Southern California. Chen also collected personal identifying information about a U.S. Navy employee and kept detailed biographical files on military personnel who were potential intelligence targets, the department said.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
In March 2023, Lai travelled to the United States and delivered a cell phone to Chen for covert communications with the MSS — a phone Chen referred to as a “state secret.” Chen travelled to China in 2024 and again in 2025, where he met MSS officers and received further assignments concerning U.S. service members. In April 2025, Lai again travelled from China to the United States to carry out MSS assignments, and the following month the MSS directed him to travel to Phoenix, Arizona, to facilitate another clandestine cash payment of approximately $20,000, according to the Justice Department.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
What officials said at the sentencing
“Liren Lai and Yuance Chen operated in a long-running scheme to undermine U.S. national security by supporting Chinese intelligence operations and recruiting in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “Lai's and Chen's activities, undertaken at the direction of the PRC, were extensive and brazen.” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian for the Northern District of California said the defendants “were directed by a foreign intelligence service to gather information about the U.S. military in the hopes of undermining our national security,” and that Friday's sentences “should demonstrate our commitment to holding accountable anyone who poses a similar threat to our nation.”
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division said that “by their own admission, Chen and Lai operated as illegal agents for the Chinese government on U.S. soil, carrying out clandestine intelligence work that included making covert payments, collecting sensitive military information, and attempting to recruit American service members.” He added: “Let this sentencing serve as a clear warning: If you attempt to jeopardize the safety and security of our service members, our citizens, or our nation, justice will find you.”
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
The offence both men pleaded to is not classic espionage — handing over classified secrets — but acting as an agent of a foreign government inside the United States without notifying the Attorney General, a long-standing federal requirement meant to make foreign influence visible. Prosecutors use it where a foreign service runs people covertly: the secrecy itself is the crime, and it lets the courts act before classified material changes hands. Here the admitted conduct behind the charge reached into the armed forces themselves — photographs of a major naval base, filming inside a recruiting station, and files on individual sailors — which is why three senior officials, from the Justice Department's National Security Division, the U.S. Attorney in Northern California and the FBI's counterintelligence leadership, all spoke on the record at sentencing.
Arrest, guilty pleas — and what happens next
Lai and Chen were arrested on June 27, 2025, in a coordinated FBI counterintelligence and law enforcement operation. A federal grand jury in the Northern District of California indicted them on July 1, 2025, on the conspiracy and foreign-agent charges. Lai pleaded guilty to both offences on December 12, 2025, and Chen pleaded guilty to both on February 20, 2026. The FBI's San Francisco Field Office led the investigation, with help from the FBI's Portland, Houston and San Diego field offices and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The case was prosecuted by the Justice Department's National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, with support from the U.S. Attorney's offices in Oregon, the Southern District of Texas and the Southern District of California.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
With Friday's sentences, both men now begin 30-month federal prison terms, after which each faces three years of supervised release. The Justice Department's announcement carried no further court dates in the case. For readers on the West Coast — including the large Punjabi communities around the Bay Area, the Central Valley and Seattle–Tacoma, all within reach of the bases and recruiting stations named in this case — the prosecution is a reminder that federal counterintelligence work runs quietly through ordinary American cities: a locker in Livermore, a recruiting office in Southern California, a naval base across Puget Sound from Seattle, and a cash run to Phoenix.