[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia [official website] on Friday sentenced [DOJ press release] Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized US citizen and Louisiana businessman, to 188 months in prison for his part in a conspiracy to deliver national defense information to China [JURIST news archive]. Judge Leonie Brinkema [official profile] also required Kuo to forfeit $40,000 after he pleaded guilty to the espionage charges on May 13. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website], between March 2007 and February 2008 Gregg William Bergersen, an analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency [official website], a group within the Department of Defense (DOD) [official website], gave Kuo classified information on US military sales to Taiwan [JURIST news archive] and US military communications security. The DOJ also stated that Kuo gave gifts to Bergersen and promised to give him a position in his company. BBC News has more.

Bergersen was charged [affidavit, PDF] and arrested [JURIST report] in February and later pleaded guilty [DOJ press release; JURIST report] to conspiracy for disclosing national defense information. Last month he was sentenced [JURIST report] to five years in prison. In another Chinese espionage case, Dongfan "Greg" Chung, a former Chinese-American engineer at Boeing [corporate website], was arrested in February and charged with stealing corporate trade secrets [PDF indictment] related to aerospace programs and turning them over to China. Chung's and Bergersen's activities were allegedly linked by Chi Mak [CI Centre backgrounder; JURIST report], a Chinese-American engineer sentenced [JURIST report] in March for conspiring to smuggle sensitive naval intelligence data to China.