Chinese intelligence spent a decade cultivating a Fed adviser with a fake student identity, paid trips, and control over his personal life. A jury still acquitted him of espionage.
CNBC’s Inside Man shows an officer U.S. officials identify as Jin Chuan, using the name Hummin Lee, targeting economist John Harold Rogers after a 2013 Shanghai conference. Court records show Rogers altered document markings, emailed internal Fed material to himself, and printed FOMC-related papers before China trips. In February 2026 he was cleared of conspiring to steal trade secrets. In July he got 38 months for lying to investigators.
Lee funded travel, fixed visas, witnessed the prenup, and helped a dating-site romance become a marriage. Beijing’s role in that romance was never proven. Agents found more than $50,000 cash in a closet. They could not prove who put it there.
The case broke when sextortion over photos on a Fed phone forced Rogers to talk to inspectors. At trial he called Lee “a spy,” then said he felt “duped. He was my friend.”
The Fed’s watchdog now says the Board still lacks a real insider-risk system. The question left standing is simple. How much secret economic data can a lonely official hand over before a jury will call it spying?
$BTC $MOVR $STX
CNBC’s Inside Man shows an officer U.S. officials identify as Jin Chuan, using the name Hummin Lee, targeting economist John Harold Rogers after a 2013 Shanghai conference. Court records show Rogers altered document markings, emailed internal Fed material to himself, and printed FOMC-related papers before China trips. In February 2026 he was cleared of conspiring to steal trade secrets. In July he got 38 months for lying to investigators.
Lee funded travel, fixed visas, witnessed the prenup, and helped a dating-site romance become a marriage. Beijing’s role in that romance was never proven. Agents found more than $50,000 cash in a closet. They could not prove who put it there.
The case broke when sextortion over photos on a Fed phone forced Rogers to talk to inspectors. At trial he called Lee “a spy,” then said he felt “duped. He was my friend.”
The Fed’s watchdog now says the Board still lacks a real insider-risk system. The question left standing is simple. How much secret economic data can a lonely official hand over before a jury will call it spying?
$BTC $MOVR $STX
