LOS ANGELES — 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 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 U.S. 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…