April 23 (UPI) — An ex-U.S. Army intelligence officer will spend the next seven years in jail for selling American military secrets to Chinese officials and trying to recruit others in the scheme.
On Wednesday, 25-year-old Korbein Schultz of Wills Point, Texas, was sentenced to 84 months in a federal prison for conspiring to collect and transmit confidential U.S. military national defense intel to an individual Schultz thought to be affiliated with the Chinese government for more than $42,000 in exchange.
“Protecting classified information is paramount to our national security, and this sentencing reflects the ramifications when there is a breach of that trust,” Brig. Gen. Rhett R. Cox, commanding general of the U.S. Army’s counterintelligence command, said in a release.
In August, Schultz pleaded guilty after he was arrested in March 2024 and faced decades behind bars “despite clear indications” the person he sold military intel to was “likely” connected to the communist Chinese government, and for attempting to recruit a fellow officer in a “nice and slow fashion.”
He admitted to selling scores of sensitive information anywhere from May 2022 until his arrest.
It included fighter jet manuals, documents on missiles and lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in connection to Beijing’s threat to take Taiwan, NATO troop deployment locations, details on U.S. military exercises in the Korean peninsula and the Philippines and tactics for countering unmanned aerial systems in large-scale combat operations.
Copies of encrypted online communication between he and “Conspirator A” show that Schultz was motivated by money, and responded enthusiastically to the prospect of making more of it.
“I hope so!” Schultz was quoted in court documents while responding online to his co-conspirator who said he could earn more money. “I need to get my other BMW back.”
After a deal, Schultz told his contact that he wanted to forge a long-term relationship. And as their partnership advanced, Conspirator A asked for increasingly sensitive military information.
Cox says Schultz’s actions “put Army personnel at risk placing individual gain above personal honor” as he urged current and former U.S. military personnel to report any suspiciously similar activity.
“The People’s Republic of China is relentless in its efforts to steal our national defense information, and service members are a prime target,” FBI Director Kash Patel stated Wednesday, adding how the FBI’s and its partners will continue to “root out espionage and hold those accountable who abandon their obligation to safeguard defense information from hostile foreign governments.”
