Former Fed adviser was given more than three years in prison for lying about giving China secrets
John Rogers, a former adviser to the Federal Reserve, is going to prison for more than three years because he lied about giving China private information.
According to the US Department of Justice, John Harold Rogers, who used to be a senior adviser to the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors, was given more than three years in prison for lying to federal investigators about giving Chinese intelligence agents restricted central bank information.
Rogers, who is 64 years old, was found guilty of lying to police in February after denying that he had shared private Federal Reserve knowledge about monetary policy. But he was found not guilty of the more serious charge of plotting to spy on businesses.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Rogers lied about what he did to agents on purpose and then repeated those lies during his trial.
John Rogers gave sensitive information about the Federal Reserve to Chinese spies in secret for years, then lied to investigators about it. He also lied again while he was on trial; as if that wasn’t bad enough, Pirro said in a statement on Wednesday.
The sentencing comes as President Donald Trump increases his administration’s efforts to stop what it says is Chinese economic espionage.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich gave Rogers a sentence of more than three years in prison and told him he had to do an extra year of controlled release after he got out of jail.
Lawyers for Rogers’ defense wanted him to be sentenced to no more time in prison than the 18 months he had already served. All of that time will be added to his prison term.
The Justice Department says Rogers was a senior adviser in the Division of International Finance at the Federal Reserve Board from 2010 to 2021. In this job, he had access to private information about US monetary policy and the Federal Open Market Committee’s meetings.
Prosecutors said that Beijing could have made “enormous profits” by trading its about $1.5-trillion worth of US Treasury securities if it had known about Federal Reserve interest rate decisions ahead of time.
Prosecutors said Rogers started a secret relationship with Hummin Lee in 2017. They stated that Lee was a Chinese intelligence agent whom Rogers met during a meeting in China.
Officials allege that Rogers shared private Federal Reserve data during discussions in hotel rooms in China, which were purportedly educational classes.
The Justice Department also said Rogers printed restricted Federal Reserve documents before going to China, took off the security labels before sending the documents to his personal account, and then sent private information to a professor at Fudan University.
According to the prosecutors, Rogers got university professorships and money in exchange.
It was also found that Rogers denied ever sharing limited Federal Reserve information outside the institution in an interview with the Federal Reserve’s inspector general in February 2020.
According to the Justice Department, Rogers said “never” when asked directly if he had shared private Federal Reserve information.
