Taiwan Indicts Former News Host and Six Military Personnel on Chinese Espionage Charges
Kaohsiung's Ciaotou District Prosecutors Office on May 6 indicted former CTi News anchor Lin Chen-you and six active-duty and retired military personnel on charges under Taiwan's Anti-Infiltration, Anti-Money Laundering, and Anti-Corruption acts. Prosecutors allege Lin collaborated since 2023 with Chinese national Huang, routing cryptocurrency bribes through Binance and OKX to six Army and Navy personnel in exchange for classified military documents; per Focus Taiwan, payments ranged from NT$70,000 to NT$1.74 million per recipient. Prosecutors also allege Lin produced anti-recall campaign videos on Chinese direction between June and August 2025, submitting scripts to Huang for pre-approval and receiving 4,325 Tether (~NT$130,000) in return. Prosecutors requested a combined 12-year sentence for Lin and asked the court to exclude citizen judges on national security grounds.
The indictment exposes a dual-track PRC intelligence operation in which a single Chinese handler, Huang, simultaneously ran an influence campaign targeting Taiwan's domestic recall politics and a military secrets collection effort, using cryptocurrency exchanges as the operational payment layer. Prosecutors' request to exclude citizen judges signals the evidentiary base extends into classified material that cannot be safely ventilated in open proceedings. We assess it is
4 sources
- Former news host faces China espionage charges -
Taipei Times - CTi reporter indicted for allegedly bribing soldiers to leak military secrets -
Focus Taiwan (CNA) - Taiwan prosecutors move on ex-CTi anchor spy case -
Taiwan News - Taiwan charges journalist with espionage, bribing soldiers -
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