WASHINGTON -- A former Federal Reserve official was sentenced Wednesday to more than three years in prison for lying to investigators about sharing confidential information outside of the central bank, in a case that combined Chinese spies, economic espionage and a blackmail scam involving nude photographs.
John Rogers, a former senior adviser in the Fed's division of international finance, was found guilty earlier this year of making a false statement when he denied, in a 2020 interview with the central bank's internal watchdog, that he ever released restricted information. But a jury acquitted him of a more serious charge that he conspired to commit economic espionage, rejecting federal prosecutors' claims that Rogers leveraged his access to internal documents -- including sensitive economic forecasts and briefing materials for Fed rate-setters -- and conveyed them to Chinese intelligence officers.
Handing down the 38-month sentence, Judge Dabney Friedrich cited Rogers's senior role at the Fed and a "pattern of sharing" sensitive information with contacts in China.
"This is far from the ordinary false-statement case," Friedrich said.
The trial shined a light on the federal government's longstanding concerns about the Fed as a prime target for foreign intelligence services, with prosecutors referring to Rogers's alleged dealings with Chinese spies as one battleground in what Beijing has termed a financial war. The court proceedings also painted a detailed portrait of a respected economist chasing love and friendship in China, then seeing that pursuit spiral into a forced retirement from the Fed and a criminal conviction.
Following his departure from the Fed, Rogers was hired as a professor at a Chinese university and received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Prosecutors alleged that Rogers dealt with a Chinese handler who, under the alias Hummin Lee, posed as an academic when he introduced himself at a conference in 2013. Four years later, Rogers met a woman online in China whom he later married, and Lee came to take on an indispensable role in the lives of a couple separated by distance, language and a significant age gap.
At the end of 2018, Rogers spent a sabbatical in Shanghai and stepped up his meetings with Lee, who expressed interest in Fed information, prosecutors alleged. In messages, prosecutors said, the two used coded language to refer to their meetings as classes.
The trial hinged on the question of whether Rogers was knowingly advancing China's interests in sharing information, or had been duped into helping spies he believed were academics.
Rogers's defense lawyer said the economist genuinely considered Lee a fellow academic and close friend, calling his client "book smart" but a "sucker when it comes to a lot of other things."
Rogers testified in his own defense and said, after sitting through the trial, he'd come to understand Lee was a spy and felt he was "duped." He conceded that he provided sensitive Fed information to an academic co-author at Fudan University in China, but his defense team argued that prosecutors had fallen short of proving that he actually shared sensitive materials with his alleged co-conspirators in Chinese intelligence.
In court Wednesday, Rogers said he is "not and never was a spy for the Chinese." Detained since late January 2025, he described his time already spent behind bars as "extraordinarily difficult" and said, "I did not betray my country."
Friedrich said there was "overwhelming evidence" that he shared sensitive Fed information on multiple occasions with individuals in China. The judge, a Trump appointee, said Rogers took "calculated actions," including his use of personal email and altering Fed materials to remove markings noting their sensitivity, that belied his narrative of being naive in his dealings with Chinese contacts.
Rogers's undoing began with a string of emails and an alarming realization: He was being blackmailed. In early 2020, online scammers messaged with threats to release nude photographs he had taken and sent to people he believed were beautiful women -- or even to kidnap his then-18-month-old daughter -- unless he sent them money. When he came forward to report the extortion scam to the Fed, he found internal investigators were more interested in his travel and contacts in China.
When asked if nude photographs existed of him, Rogers answered no before saying he couldn't rule it out from a period a few years earlier when he was on dating apps. He responded "never" when asked if he ever shared restricted Fed information outside the central bank.
A search of his Fed-issued phone, personal iPad and email account revealed nude photos recently sent from his phone, along with messages exchanged with Lee over the Chinese app WeChat where they discussed assignments for Rogers to collect information and plans to meet in Shanghai hotel rooms, prosecutors said.
Write to C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 15, 2026 15:48 ET (19:48 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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