Jacksonville Navy officer gets prison time in secrecy-clouded case involving Chinese CEO
A Jacksonville-based U.S. Navy officer will spend four years behind bars for crimes he committed because of his connection to a Chinese business executive, a federal judge said Wednesday.
Lt. Fan Yang, 37, was convicted in November of conspiracy and gun crimes for supplying the executive with guns to use at shooting ranges during business trips to America.
The sentence also covered his conviction for lying to Navy officials to hide his relationship with the executive, Shanghai Breeze Technology Co. Chairman Ge Songtao. The executive was trying to smuggle American-made equipment to China to copy for the Chinese military and hired Yang’s wife to help his company while Yang was stationed at Jacksonville Naval Air Station.
Lt. Yang convicted: Jury: Jacksonville Navy officer guilty of gun crimes to help Chinese business executive
Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger expressed bafflement at Yang’s ties to Ge and the officer’s steps to hide those links during reviews of his high-level Navy security clearance.
“Will he ever understand what the word ‘compromise’ means?” Schlesinger asked defense attorney Charles Truncale, saying later that “Ge Songtao was getting his hooks into the defendant for potential detrimental” future use.
Attorneys appeared to be sparring over points closely connected to that idea but were deliberately opaque because the entire court case has been handled since 2019 under a system of national security review meant to protect classified information.
That system has kept parts of Yang’s case out of public view, including sentencing memos that prosecutors and defense routinely file to argue over small details before a sentencing.
Those memos were filed under seal, Schlesinger said Wednesday, and lawyers argued parts of their positions with only vague references to “sensitive information.”
That information seemed to include material about Ge and his activities, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Coolican at one point referencing “evidence about who Ge Songtao really is” and saying Yang “had suspicions about his real identity.”
Ge Songtao sentenced to 42 months in prison in 2021
Ge was sentenced last year to 42 months in prison after pleading guilty to two export crimes investigators turned up during a probe that used warrants from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He’s locked up at the Federal Correctional Institution Jesup in Wayne County, Ga., according to an inmate locator website run by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Ge admitted in a plea deal to have people at his company try to buy and ship to China inflatable American “raiding craft” used by military teams including Navy SEALs. Ge also wanted to secretly export specialized Evinrude multi-fuel engines that Ge’s lawyer said during his client’s sentencing Ge’s firm intended “to try to reverse-engineer … and then use it in a bid to the Chinese Navy.”
Yang’s wife, Yang Yang, helped Ge’s staff contact American businesses about that and other deals. Like Ge, she took a plea bargain, and she was sentenced to time served in late 2020.
Unlike the others, the lieutenant wasn't prosecuted for export crimes. Instead, he was convicted of making straw purchases of two handguns he bought for Ge, who loved shooting but couldn't own a handgun legally because he was a non-resident foreigner. Jurors last year fund him guilty of conspiring with Ge, giving false information to two gun dealers when he bought guns for Ge as well as lying on a security-clearance review by denying having any ties to a foreigner.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Judge sentences Jacksonville Navy officer to 4 years for gun crimes
