Two more charged as China agents over US Navy data

LOS ANGELES, June 8 (Reuters) Two more members of a Southern California family have been indicted for acting as agents of Beijing in a widening probe into an attempt to send sensitive information about U.S. Navy warship technology to China.

The indictment returned late yesterday by a grand jury in Santa Ana brought to five the members of a Chinese-American family now charged with being Chinese agents, the U S attorney's office in Los Angeles said.

Chi Mak, 65, an engineer at a U.S. Navy defense contractor, his wife and his brother, were all indicted in November 2005.

Mak's sister-in-law Fuk Heung Li, and his nephew Billy Yui Mak, 26, were added to the indictment on Wednesday.

According to previous court documents in the case, Chi Mak was asked by unidentified Chinese officials to collect sensitive technical information about the U.S. Navy's current and future warship technology.

Prosecutors said Chi Mak and his wife Rebecca Laiwah Chiu copied the information onto computer disks and gave them to his brother Tai Mak. Tai Mak's son then encrypted the data onto another disk which was hidden in the luggage of his parents as they tried to board a flight from Los Angeles to China last October, prosecutors said.

None of the five have been charged with espionage because the material was not formally classified as secret, U.S. attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said. The investigation of the family was continuing, he added.

The charge of failing to register as an agent of a foreign government carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

REUTERS SK VC0110