How a Chinese operative cultivated a Federal Reserve adviser

SharpPost Editorial Team | October 1, 2026

When a man calling himself Hummin Lee approached Federal Reserve economist John Harold Rogers at a Shanghai conference in 2013, he introduced himself as a doctoral student. U.S. officials say he was a Chinese intelligence operative.

A CNBC investigation published September 30 traces the relationship through messages, investigators' recordings and court evidence. Rogers was sentenced in July to 38 months in prison for lying to investigators. A jury acquitted him of conspiring to commit economic espionage.

Rogers worked as a senior adviser in the Fed Board's international finance division from 2010 to 2021. The position gave him access to information well before it reached financial markets. The Justice Department's January 2025 indictment announcement described material ranging from internal economic datasets and discussions of tariffs on China to briefing books and deliberations of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets U.S. interest rates.

Prosecutors argued that advance knowledge of policy decisions could give China an advantage in trading U.S. bonds and other securities. The announcement did not identify trades or profits resulting from the alleged disclosures.

According to CNBC, Lee arranged lecture invitations, visas and travel, then helped Rogers navigate marriage and the birth of a child with a Chinese woman. Rogers became increasingly dependent on him. Whether his wife had any connection to the Chinese government remains unclear, the broadcaster reported.

Lee also sent questions about the dollar, trade tensions and the Fed's policy response, asking Rogers to seek answers from colleagues or documents. Rogers testified that these were ordinary macroeconomic questions that could be answered from published research.

Prosecutors described a covert relationship developing from 2017. In its July sentencing announcement, the Justice Department said Rogers used hotel-room classes in China to pass along Fed information that Lee had asked him to collect.

The department said Rogers printed restricted documents before traveling, removed classification markings from material he emailed to his personal account, and sent sensitive information to a professor at Fudan University. The nature of the documents and the alleged espionage conspiracy were contested at trial. On February 3, the jury rejected the conspiracy charge but convicted Rogers of making false statements.

That conviction turned on an answer he gave Fed investigators on February 4, 2020. Asked whether he had shared restricted information outside the Board, Rogers replied: “Never.”

His lawyers said he had sought the interview himself after online blackmailers threatened him and his young child. He was questioned without a lawyer present. The defense acknowledged that he had previously sent a document to a co-author at a Chinese university, while insisting that he had never been a Chinese spy.

On July 15, the court imposed 38 months in prison and a year of supervised release, below the five-year sentence prosecutors requested. His lawyers accused the government of continuing to portray him as a spy despite the acquittal.

Separate audits have exposed wider weaknesses in the Fed's safeguards. A July 15 inspector general's report found that the Board was not proactively or effectively managing insider risks. It lacked a centralized program, procedures for timely information-sharing and insider-risk training requirements for all staff. Auditors made nine recommendations.

On September 24, the inspector general issued another alert over a departing employee who may have removed restricted monetary-policy material and other sensitive information. The employee had a previous information-security incident. Concerned about the Board's response, auditors issued the warning before completing their review of its departure procedures.