Former Boeing engineer sentenced

A former Boeing engineer in Huntington Beach was sentenced Monday to nearly 16 years in prison for stealing aerospace secrets for China.

Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 79, of Orange, spied for the People’s Republic of China for more than three decades, passing information on restricted technology and trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle program and Delta IV rocket, officials said.

Chung, a naturalized citizen originally from China, was convicted after a three-week trial of six counts of economic espionage to benefit a foreign country, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China and making false statements to the FBI, according to the United States Attorney’s office.

He made several trips to China to deliver lectures on technology between 1985 and 2003 and met with government officials.

Chung began receiving letters from members of the Chinese aviation industry in 1979, directing him to collect specific information related to the Space Shuttle and military and civilian aircraft data. The letters discussed ways to pass information, including using his wife and fellow engineer Chi Mak and his wife, according to the attorney’s office.

Mak and some of his family members were convicted of providing defense information to China, and he was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2008.

FBI and NASA agents found more than 250,000 pages of documents in Chung’s house and in a crawl space underneath. The documents recorded decades of reports, results and information, according to the attorney’s office.

Chung was employed by Rockwell International from 1973 until Boeing acquired its defense and space unit. He held a “secret” security clearance during that time to work on the Space Shuttle program.

He retired in 2002, but returned the next year to work as a contractor until September 2006.

— Britney Barnes