Former Fed adviser sentenced to 38 months for lying to investigators

Jury acquits ex-Fed official of economic espionage

A former senior Federal Reserve adviser was sentenced Wednesday to 38 months in prison for lying to the central bank’s internal investigators about sharing confidential information with contacts in China, in a case that blended economic espionage allegations with a blackmail scheme involving nude photographs.

Rogers served as a senior adviser in the Fed’s Division of International Finance. He was convicted earlier this year of making a false statement when he denied, during a 2020 interview with the Fed’s Office of Inspector General, that he ever released restricted information. The jury acquitted him of a more serious charge of conspiracy to commit economic espionage.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said there was “overwhelming evidence” that Rogers shared sensitive Fed information on multiple occasions with individuals in China, citing a “pattern of sharing.” She noted his senior role at the Fed and said he took “calculated actions,” pointing to his use of personal email and his practice of altering Fed documents to remove sensitivity markings.

“This is far from the ordinary false-statement case,” Friedrich said.

Prosecutors had alleged that Rogers leveraged his access to economic forecasts and briefing materials prepared for the Federal Open Market Committee and conveyed them to Chinese intelligence officers. The case involved a handler using the alias Hummin Lee, who posed as an academic when he introduced himself to Rogers at a conference in 2013.

Four years later, Rogers met a woman online in China whom he later married, and Lee became an intermediary between the couple. In late 2018, Rogers spent a sabbatical in Shanghai and increased meetings with Lee, who expressed interest in Fed information. The two used coded language, referring to their meetings as “classes,” according to prosecutors.

The trial centered on whether Rogers knowingly advanced China’s interests or had been deceived. His defense lawyer described him as “book smart” but a “sucker when it comes to a lot of other things.” Rogers testified in his own defense, saying he had come to understand during the trial that Lee was a spy and felt “duped.” He conceded he provided sensitive Fed information to an academic co-author at Fudan University in China.

Rogers’s undoing began in early 2020 when online scammers threatened to release nude photographs he had taken and sent to people he believed were women, and threatened to kidnap his then-18-month-old daughter unless he sent money. He reported the extortion to the Fed, but its internal investigators became more interested in his travel and contacts in China.

When asked during the interview whether nude photographs existed of him, Rogers answered no before saying he could not rule it out from a period when he was on dating apps. He responded “never” when asked if he had ever shared restricted Fed information outside the central bank.

A search of his Fed-issued phone and personal devices revealed nude photos recently sent from his phone, along with messages exchanged with Lee over the Chinese app WeChat discussing assignments and plans to meet in Shanghai hotel rooms, prosecutors said.

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 in custody as “extraordinarily difficult” and said, “I did not betray my country.”

After leaving the Fed, Rogers was hired as a professor at a Chinese university and received hundreds of thousands of dollars. Friedrich imposed the 38-month sentence.