US State Dept employee sentenced to 4 years for selling defense information

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. State Department employee was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday for conspiring to collect and transmit national defense information to individuals he believed to be working for China’s government, the Justice Department said.

Michael Schena, 42, of Alexandria, Virginia, worked at State Department headquarters in Washington. He held a top secret security clearance and had access to information up to the secret level, the Justice Department said.

Beginning in April 2022, Schena communicated with people he met online through various platforms and provided them sensitive U.S. government information in exchange for money, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Two of these individuals represented themselves as employees of inte