By Marlyn Montilla
08 Mar 2024, 16:46 PM EST
An active-duty soldier and intelligence analyst spent more than a year selling secret military documents linked to the U.S. defense of Taiwan, weapons system and missile defense systems to China, federal prosecutors argued in an indictment.
Identified as Korbein Schultz, 24, faces charges for using his top-secret security clearance to download classified U.S. government records at the behest of an anonymous man who claimed to live in Hong Kong, and allegedly took $42,000 in the process.
He was captured Thursday and charged with six counts, including conspiracy and bribery. According to court reports, Schultz was a sergeant and intelligence analyst and was assigned to the 506th Infantry Battalion. The Army said Schultz has been in service since November 2018.
The Chinese government is not mentioned in the documents as the recipient of the information or as the author of the plan, but much of the military information that the soldier is accused of having transmitted is linked to that country.
Beginning in June 2022, prosecutors said Schultz and his accomplice began communicating online and through encrypted messaging applications.
Likewise, he was ordered to prioritize the transmission of “original and exclusive documents” to his handler, including information related to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the “operation of sensitive US military systems and their capabilities,” according to the court documents.
The two reportedly agreed to partner long-term, CBS News reported.
In July 2022, detectives argued that the soldier was sending information about highly mobile artillery rocket systems, the type of system the United States has sent to Ukraine for use against Russia.
Additionally, he is accused of transmitting confidential documents on hypersonic equipment and summaries of US military exercises in August 2022.
Money seemed to be his motivation. In one message, the young soldier apparently told the woman responsible for him: “I need to get my other BMW back.”
“I will continue to send you a wealth of information,” he wrote to his accomplice, prosecutors say, later revealing his desire to compare himself to Jason Bourne, the fictional spy created by author Rober Ludlum.
In August 2023, his job was in part to instruct others on the proper handling of classified information, he discussed with his Chinese handler the separate arrests that month of two Marines accused of sending classified information to China.
In that sense, last November, prosecutors argued that the manager asked Schultz to talk about the job “for next year.”
The charges against Schultz come days after Jack Texeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, pleaded guilty to illegally publishing classified military records on an online gaming platform in one of the leak campaigns that caused him considerable harm. the army.
Likewise, on Tuesday, an Air Force employee was accused of leaking classified information connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine to an individual through a foreign dating site.
Keep reading:
- Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old soldier accused of leaking secret Pentagon documents, was indicted on criminal charges by a federal grand jury.
- White House official assured that China has had a spy center in Cuba since 2019
- Pentagon typographical error causes millions of confidential messages to be sent to an African country allied with Russia