Baimadajie Angwang, 33, who was born in China's Tibet region and serves in the U.S. Army Reserve, allegedly reported on the activity of ethnic Tibetans in the New York area to the Chinese consulate and was tasked with recruiting potential intelligence assets among the city's Tibetan community, prosecutors said.
As an agent, he “spotted and assessed potential ethnic Tibetan intelligence sources in the New York metropolitan area and beyond,” the complaint said. Tibetans have long been oppressed by the Chinese government and many are believed to have been killed since China occupied the region decades ago.
"The PRC has referred to Tibetans as one of 'the five poisons' threatening the stability of the PRC," the federal complaint said.
The charges against Angwang include acting as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the attorney general, making false statements about his contacts, obstruction of an official proceeding and wire fraud.
Around May 2019, he devised a scheme to defraud the Department of Defense "and to obtain money and property from the U.S. government by means of one or more materially false and fraudulent pretenses," prosecutors said.
The alleged espionage activity occurred from May 2018 to his arrest, prosecutors said. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.