Yaoning Sun gets 4 years in prison for acting as Beijing’s agent in California

A California man has been sentenced to four years in prison for acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government while working as a campaign adviser for a local politician.

Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, was sentenced on Monday in federal court in Los Angeles after pleading guilty last year in a deal with prosecutors.

Under the agreement, Sun acknowledged acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the People’s Republic of China from 2022 to 2024 without notifying the US attorney general as required by law.

“When Americans vote for elected officials, they expect them to represent the interests of their constituents – not those of a foreign adversary like the Chinese government,” Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence and espionage division, said in a statement.

Federal prosecutors had asked for a five-year sentence for Sun.

Sun’s lawyer, Adam Olin, declined to comment. In court papers, Olin asked for Sun to be sentenced to time served after spending more than a year in custody, contending his client lived a law-abiding life in the United States since moving from China in 1996.