A former U.S. Army sergeant has been sentenced to four years in prison by a federal judge after being accused of trying to pass sensitive military information to China.
Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 31, pleaded guilty to two felonies for offering classified information to the Chinese government along with a device that could gain access to secure military computer networks. According to the Justice Department, he had access to sensitive defense information in his role.
Schmidt was active duty from 2015 to 2020 and worked with the 109th Military Intelligence Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.
He left the Army in January of 2020 and reached out to the Chinese Consulate in Turkey and the Chinese security services offering information. Schmidt traveled to Hong Kong in March of that year and continued to provide the classified information, including creating several documents that described various “high level secrets.”
The ex-soldier got a work visa in China and lived there for three years until flying to San Francisco, where he was arrested in October 2023.
“As a retired Army officer, I find it unconscionable for a former soldier to put his colleagues and country at risk by peddling secret information and intelligence access to a hostile foreign power,” U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd said in a DOJ news release.
“These cases remain a priority for our office to keep our country safe,” he added.
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