Tag: espionage

Foreign Espionage Arrests Up 50 Percent: FBI

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Oct. 15 that the agency is cracking down on espionage by foreign adversaries, with an increase in arrests as high as 50 percent.

“We have gone after espionage activities against our main counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran,” he said at a press conference.

“In China alone, we’ve had over a 50 percent increase in espionage arrests alone, and prosecutions,” Patel said. “In Iran, we have had a 50 percent increase, again, in espionage cases. And in Russia, we had a 33 percent increase in espionage cases alone.”

State Department employee Ashley Tellis, arrested on Oct. 12, was accused of removing classified information and meeting with Chinese regime officials.

A former State Department employee, Michael Schena, was arrested in March and sentenced on Sept. 4 for conspiring to collect and transmit national defense information to Chinese authorities.

In August, two Chinese nationals were arrested and accused of smuggling sensitive AI chips, subject to export controls, to China.

In June, two Chinese nationals were arrested on charges of spying for Chinese intelligence operations.

In September, an Armenian national was charged with conspiring to export goods and information that would help with semiconductor manufacturing to Russia.

On Aug. 6, Taylor Adam Lee, an active duty soldier, was arrested on charges of attempted transmission of national defense information to a foreign adversary, Russia.

In March, two Iranian nationals were charged with conspiring to supply drones and launder money for the IRGC, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Patel also said there have been 125 counterterrorism cases this year, compared to 100 last year. And he cited increased disruptions of cybercrime enterprises.

“This year, you already have 52 arrests. Fifty-two arrests of violent cyber criminals who are stealing from senior citizens, who are violating our children’s rights and freedoms, and who are violating everyday Americans,” he said.

U.S. law enforcement, cooperating with UK law enforcement, announced the seizure of $15 billion in bitcoin from a Cambodian cyberscam ring on Oct. 14. This represents the largest-ever digital currency seizure by U.S. law enforcement.

Chen Zhi and his Prince Group conglomerate allegedly engaged in a massive wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy via at least 10 slave labor scam compounds across Cambodia.

The scam ring also used networks around the world, according to the Justice Department, and one such branch in Brooklyn was responsible for laundering millions of dollars taken from more than 250 victims in the United States.

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State Department Employee Steals Thousands of Pages of “Top Secret” Classified Documents, Meets with Chinese Officials

A State Department contractor stole thousands of pages of “TOP SECRET” classified documents and met with Beijing officials.

Ashley Tellis, an expert on India and South Asian affairs, removed the top secret documents from secure locations and met with Chinese officials.

The classified documents were located in Tellis’s Virginia home during a raid.

“On Sept. 25, he allegedly printed U.S. Air Force documents concerning military aircraft capabilities. Federal prosecutors allege that he met with Chinese government officials multiple times over the past several years,” Fox News reported.

Prosecutors said in September 2022 that Tellis brought a manila envelope with him when he met with Chinese officials in a Virginia restaurant.

Fox News reported:

A State Department employee is accused of removing classified documents from secure locations and meeting with Chinese officials dating back to 2023.

The Justice Department said Ashley Tellis was an unpaid senior adviser to the State Department and also a contractor with the Office of Net Assessment at the Department of Defense, recently renamed the Department of War. He is considered a subject-matter expert on India and South Asian affairs in his role at the Office of Net Assessment.

Tellis began working for the State Department in 2001, court documents state. He is accused of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to an affidavit.

He held a top-secret clearance and had access to sensitive information, federal prosecutors said in court documents. He was also employed as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Spies were ‘gagged’ from objecting to new Chinese mega embassy plans

British spies were ‘gagged’ from raising objections to a new Chinese embassy in east London, documents suggest.

The revelations about the proposed embassy – dubbed a ‘spy campus’ – are likely to increase concerns about the development on the site of the Royal Mint buildings near the Tower of London.

A final decision on whether to approve the plan, revived by No 10 despite being blocked by the previous government after warnings from MI5 and Scotland Yard in 2022, has been deferred while the row about the collapsed Chinese spy trial continues.

Now unearthed documents show inspectors were denied access to key secret documents by Labour when approving the ‘mega embassy’ which will be ‘crawling with spies’.

The documents include a critical assessment from security services – the contents of which have been redacted. 

Ministers refused to allow a private inquiry, which would have allowed secret evidence to be considered.

Critics have accused ministers of trying to ram the application through and shut down any dissent or security concerns which might jeopardise it.

Officials in the Communities Department, which is handling the planning case, are preparing to announce the October 21 deadline will be pushed back. 

The department declined to comment.

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REVEALED: Undercover spy who infiltrated Swampy’s Newbury Pass eco-warriors is unmasked as paedophile who tried to have sex with children as young as six

The undercover spy who thwarted eco-warriors behind the Newbury Pass protest of the 1990s has been convicted of trying to have sex with children as young as six.

Special Branch hired a freelance agent to infiltrate a group of activists living in tunnels under the construction site and provide vital intelligence which allowed police to stealthily snatch them from the burrows.

For 30 years his identity has remained a secret.

But the Mail can unmask the spy as Edward Gratwick, who was yesterday convicted of 38 child sex offences.

The 68-year-old was arrested at Stansted Airport on March 7 while attempting to fly to Bucharest to sexually abuse a Romanian schoolgirl after making an arrangement with the child’s mother.

National Crime Agency officers swooped on the airport after receiving intelligence from foreign authorities just a few hours previously. Three children have now been safeguarded, the agency said.

Gratwick had discussed plans to abuse children in the UK and abroad with multiple individuals, some of whom were parents offering their daughters for sex.

He spoke with other paedophiles via encrypted messaging apps, offering to help supply with them children in exchange for money.

In these conversations, he boasted of having sex with a nine-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic.

Gratwick’s passport showed he travelled extensively around the world including to Sierra Leone, the Dominican Republic, Morrocco, around Europe, and the USA.

Investigators said they were investigating whether he had indeed already abused children abroad as he claimed.

Wayne Johns, head of child sexual abuse investigations at the NCA, said Gratwick’s chatlogs were the most depraved that his team of seasoned child abuse detectives had ever witnessed.

‘A dedicated team very experienced in their field had to examine these messages and for them to point out how horrendous they are is testament to the level of offending,’ he added.

When police searched Gratwick’s home in Mitcham, south London, they found 69ml of ‘date rape’ drug GBL, which is a central nervous system depressant, in a drawer of his fridge.

In messages he had discussed drugging children so they would not remember the abuse they suffered.

Detectives also discovered 1,364 indecent images of children on his devices.

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HUNGARIAN WITCH HUNT: After Ukraine Accused Orbán of Sending Drones Into Its Airspace, Now the European Union Is Investigating an Alleged Hungarian Spy Ring in Brussels

‘Everything is Hungary’s fault’.

There’s a new illness of the mind going around the Globalist corners of the European Union.

You can call it Hungarophobia or Magyarophobia, and it basically means that the conservative central European country is receiving the ‘Russian treatment’, with constant psyops and disinformation against it.

Around 10 days ago, Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky publicly accused Budapest of deploying multiple drones into Ukrainian airspace – a serious accusation never backed with any data, and soon dropped into oblivion.

Now, the Globalist archfoes of the European Union have broken another ‘sensational story’ against Viktor Orbán and his government.

Euronews reported:

“According to reports that sparked the probe, the undercover spy ring allegedly operated under the cover of the Hungarian permanent representation, which at that time was led by Olivér Várhelyi, who is now a European Commissioner.

The European Commission launched a probe on Thursday after several media reports alleged that the Hungarian secret services were trying to recruit EU employees in Brussels as informants.”

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Turkey arrests alleged Israeli Mossad spy

Turkey’s intelligence service announced the arrest of an alleged Israeli spy in Istanbul during a joint operation, state media reported on Friday.

“Serkan Cicek, who was identified as working for the Israeli secret service Mossad, was detained as a result of a joint operation carried out by the MIT [Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization], the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Istanbul Provincial Police Department’s Counter-Terrorism Branch,” Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency reported on Friday. 

Cicek, a detective, had reportedly worked with Musa Kus and lawyer Tugrulhan Dip in the past, both “arrested for spying for Israel” and accused of providing personal data from public records to detectives “in exchange for financial gain,” Anadolu added.

The report further claimed that Cicek had been in contact with a member of Israel’s Online Operations Center named Faysal Rasheed, and had admitted to allegedly conducting surveillance on a Palestinian activist.

The statement accused Cicek of being contacted on July 31 by Rasheed, who reportedly was posing as a member of a foreign law firm. Rasheed then allegedly hired Cicek to surveil a Palestinian activist in Basaksehir, paying $4,000 in cryptocurrency; an offer which Cicek accepted “despite knowing his associate Kus had been jailed for spying for Israel.”

Turkey frequently arrests individuals on charges of espionage, particularly those involving foreign intelligence agencies such as Israel’s Mossad. Authorities have detained dozens of suspects over the past year.

Relations between Turkey and Israel have soured in recent years in light of Ankara’s condemnation of Israel’s extensive military campaign in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 incursion.

In November 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan announced that Turkey has cut all ties with Israel.

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Founder of NYC Pro-Democracy Group Pleads Guilty to Spying for China

A Chinese man living in New York City has pleaded guilty to spying on his fellow activists on behalf of the Chinese regime’s intelligence agency, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced on Sept. 16.

Tang Yuanjun, 68, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was a prominent figure in New York City’s Chinese dissident community, having participated in protests outside the Chinese Consulate in the New York City borough of Manhattan and founded a pro-democracy group, the Chinese Democracy Party Eastern U.S. Headquarters Inc., based in the Flushing neighborhood of the borough of Queens.

Despite his public advocacy against Beijing, Tang was secretly working under the direction of the Chinese intelligence service to collect information on his fellow Chinese American dissidents, according to a guilty plea entered on Sept. 16.

As part of the plea, Tang admitted to one count of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the attorney general, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.

“For years, Yuanjun Tang abused the trust he had gained among pro-democracy activists in New York City and around the United States by secretly accepting tasks from Chinese intelligence officers and reporting on persons of interest to the [People’s Republic of China] and events conducted in support of democracy,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.

“Tang’s covert operations violated our nation’s sovereignty and threatened the security of New Yorkers exercising their fundamental rights to free speech and free association. Tang’s plea … illustrates our profound commitment to protecting American ideals from malign foreign influence.”

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Israeli intel campaign used US comedian in effort to flip Iranian scientists

A mysterious online campaign linked to Israel’s intelligence services attempted to recruit Iranians to overthrow their government. Some appear to have been placed by an Atlanta-based comedian and influencer.

Desi Banks, an Atlanta comedian and content creator, is known for his light-hearted comic sketches and currently has more than nine million followers on the social media platform Instagram. There is no public record of Banks commenting on sensitive Middle East issues, and each of his ad campaigns on Meta’s platforms relates to his work as an entertainer.

The comedian, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, seems to have served a surprising role in an apparent Israeli intelligence operation over the last year to recruit members of Iran’s security and intelligence services – including those working in nuclear centers – into aiding the overthrow of their government. Would-be defectors were offered both money and the protection of their families.

Google advertising transparency records show that a production company owned by Banks, Desi Banks Productions LLC, served a set of four Persian-language recruitment ads across at least 19 countries, including the U.S., Sweden, France, Germany, India, and numerous others across the Middle East and Africa.

The four ad campaigns included both overt and deceptive redirections into recruitment pages purporting to be run by Israel’s foreign intelligence services, the Mossad. Others advertise lucrative, tax-free jobs at apparently fictitious international consulting firms.

The most aggressive campaign redirected users to the Mossad’s official, Persian-language recruitment form, advising viewers to activate their virtual private network (VPN) before clicking. According to Google’s ad disclosure portal, this campaign was the sole instance of a Google ad directly linking to the Mossad’s official website, mossad.gov.il.

Germany-based family members of Iranian nuclear engineers appear to be a major focus of the effort, as Germany is the only country identified by the Google ad transparency portal as being targeted with all four ad campaigns.

“You are just one click away from making history,” read the Mossad recruitment ad, captioned atop a darkened cartoon of a man walking down a multi-lane road. “Call Now. The future belongs to you.”

This direct call to espionage was targeted to viewers in at least 18 countries, including the United States.

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US State Dept employee sentenced to 4 years for selling defense information

A U.S. State Department employee was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday for conspiring to collect and transmit national defense information to individuals he believed to be working for China’s government, the Justice Department said.

Michael Schena, 42, of Alexandria, Virginia, worked at State Department headquarters in Washington. He held a top secret security clearance and had access to information up to the secret level, the Justice Department said.

Beginning in April 2022, Schena communicated with people he met online through various platforms and provided them sensitive U.S. government information in exchange for money, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Two of these individuals represented themselves as employees of international consulting companies, the Justice Department said. Believing that they were working on behalf of China’s government, Schena continued his relationship with them, the Justice Department said.

In August 2024, Schena met an individual at a hotel in Peru who provided Schena $10,000 and a cellphone that was intended to be used for Schena to receive tasks and transmit information, prosecutors said.

In October 2024, while at work, Schena used the cellphone he received in Peru to photograph and transmit at least four classified documents that contained national defense information and which were classified as secret,according to prosecutors.

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Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Spy Industry Connections

After his first arrest for sex crimes, Jeffrey Epstein tried to get into a new line of work: surveillance. In 2015, he partnered with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to invest in a security tech startup called Reporty Homeland Security, now known as Carbyne. Leaked emails show that Epstein was using Barak to seek out opportunities in the surveillance industry and build connections with powerful figures around the globe, including American businessman Peter Thiel, the former director of Israeli signals intelligence, and two people in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s circle.

After he was first caught sexually exploiting teenage girls, Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution in 2008; he served a little over a year in detention. Meanwhile, he invested his wealth in bizarre projects, including a ranch to breed women with his DNA and “efforts to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you,” according to The New York Times.

The leaked emails show that Epstein was also interested in more mundane means of spying on and manipulating people, which overlapped with the technologies governments often pursue. This interest crossed borders.

Barak’s email inbox was quietly posted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a website widely considered to be a successor to WikiLeaks, on a file-sharing platform for verified journalists and researchers in May 2025. The contents came from Handala, a hacker group named for a Palestinian cartoon character that has been leaking files taken from senior Israeli officials for several months.

Although the emails were posted without technical metadata or cryptographic signatures that would allow their authenticity to be verified, they include dozens of images, videos, voice recordings, and scanned documents from Barak and his friends and family that have never been published elsewhere. And they include information that was not publicly known at the time of the email leaks, including a reference to Epstein’s birthday book.

The emails below, which have not been published elsewhere, paint a picture of Epstein as a man very eager to be at the nexus between private money and public surveillance. While they were hammering out the Reporty investment, Epstein invited Barak to come to a meeting with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in May 2014. Although Barak couldn’t make that meeting, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend real time with peter thiel [sic]” and offered to set up a dinner the following month.

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