A former senior Federal Reserve employee was drawn into a relationship with an alleged Chinese intelligence operative and later threatened over explicit photographs, before being arrested by the FBI and sentenced to 38 months in prison.
John Harold Rogers, 65, was detained while walking his dog in his suburban Washington neighbourhood in January 2025, shortly before he was due to travel to China with his wife and daughter.
Rogers avoided an espionage conviction but was found guilty of making false statements to investigators. He was sentenced in July.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Rogers had secretly passed sensitive Federal Reserve information to Chinese spies before lying to investigators and under oath at trial.
Federal prosecutor Nicholas Hunter told jurors that the case involved “sex”, money, manipulation, secret meetings in China, false identities and deceit.
Relationship with alleged Chinese spy
Rogers had held a sensitive role overseeing research in the Federal Reserve’s international finance division. After his four adult children had left home, he joined an Asian dating website and exchanged explicit images with online contacts.
He first encountered a man using the name “Hummin Lee” at a Federal Reserve conference in Shanghai in 2013. Prosecutors identified Lee as an alias used by alleged Chinese intelligence operative Jin Chuan.
Lee later became closely involved in Rogers’s personal life, sending gifts and helping him begin a relationship with Yu Liu, a Chinese woman 24 years his junior whom Rogers met online in 2016.
The relationship developed rapidly. Lee funded trips and helped produce a divorce certificate within hours after Liu’s former husband demanded 12,000 US dollars to sign the necessary papers.
Rogers and Liu married in Hong Kong in March 2018 after she became pregnant. Prosecutors said Lee arranged much of the wedding, witnessed the couple’s prenuptial agreement and attended the hospital when their daughter was born.
“I owe everything to him,” Rogers told investigators. “The baby wouldn’t have happened, the relationship with my wife wouldn’t have happened… and I love him like a brother.”
Lee reportedly asked Rogers about US financial policy, relations between China and the United States and trade policy. Rogers shared details with him, according to the case presented by prosecutors.
Explicit images and alleged blackmail
The marriage later broke down after another woman moved into Rogers’s home in Virginia, leading to a physical confrontation between the two women.
Rogers then resumed searching for relationships online. He used a Federal Reserve-issued phone to send nude photographs to Instagram models, including images taken inside the central bank’s headquarters.
In 2020, he alerted Federal Reserve officials after extortionists threatened to send the images to his employers and kidnap his young daughter. It remains unclear who was responsible for the alleged blackmail.
His disclosure brought his contacts with Chinese nationals to the attention of federal investigators. Prosecutors said he repeatedly lied when questioned about them.
Rogers resigned in 2021 and moved to Shanghai to teach at Fudan University. He was later arrested in the United States.
A lawyer for Rogers said he denied the allegations in the indictment and would comment at a later date.
