Overview
- A federal judge sentenced John Harold Rogers to 38 months in prison and 12 months of supervised release after a jury found him guilty of making false statements to investigators about sharing restricted Federal Reserve material.
- The same jury acquitted Rogers of conspiracy to commit economic espionage, so his conviction covers lying to the Fed’s Office of Inspector General rather than a criminal spying verdict.
- Prosecutors say Rogers developed a clandestine relationship beginning in 2017 with a Chinese intelligence operative named Hummin Lee and that he printed restricted documents, removed identifying markings, emailed materials to a personal account, and forwarded sensitive files to a professor at Fudan University.
- Federal prosecutors had asked for a 60‑month sentence while the defense sought credit for about 18 months Rogers already spent in custody and urged no further jail time.
- Officials and analysts say the case signals a stepped‑up U.S. enforcement stance on China‑linked economic espionage and is prompting renewed scrutiny of how the Fed protects pre‑decisional, market‑moving information; reporting finds no link to cryptocurrency activity.