Former Federal Reserve advisor indicted for economic espionage

A former senior advisor at the Federal Reserve Board was arrested and charged with economic espionage for conspiring to steal trade secrets and selling them to China. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia on Friday arrested John Harold Rogers, 63, of Vienna, Virginia, for allegedly stealing economic trade secrets and passing the information to two co-conspirators posing as graduate students that authorities claim worked for China’s intelligence and security agencies. In 2023, Rogers was paid roughly $450,000 as a part-time professor at an unnamed university in China.

Rogers worked at the Federal Reserve for 11 years as a senior advisor in the division of international finance from 2010 to 2021. The indictment alleges that Rogers solicited trade secret information on proprietary economic datasets, deliberations about tariffs targeting China, briefing books for designated governors and sensitive information about Federal Open Market Committee meetings. 

Starting at least in 2018, Rogers passed information electronically to his personal email account or printed it prior to traveling to China in preparation for meetings with his two Chinese co-conspirators, according to the indictment.  

“Under the guise of teaching ‘classes,’ Rogers met with his co-conspirators in hotel rooms in China where he conveyed sensitive, trade-secret information,” that belonged to the Federal Reserve Board and the FOMC, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a press release. Rogers also allegedly made false statements to the Federal Reserve Board’s Office of Inspector General, who said that those false statements had “a material impact on its investigation,” the release said.

“Gaining advance knowledge of U.S. economic policy, including advance knowledge of changes to the federal funds rates, could provide China with an advantage when selling or buying U.S. bonds or securities” that “could allow China to manipulate the U.S. market, in a manner similar to insider trading,” the 18-page indictment states.

Rogers allegedly carried out the conspiracy by using encrypted messaging apps and meeting with his Chinese co-conspirators in hotel rooms. He was communicating via email with China as early as 2013, according to the indictment.

Rogers’ indictment was announced on Friday by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., a Trump appointee who previously served on the platform-drafting panel of the Republican National Committee. Martin is the first U.S. attorney in at least 50 years with no experience as a judge or federal prosecutor, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. 

“As alleged in the indictment, this defendant leveraged his position within the Federal Reserve to pass sensitive financial information to the Chinese government, a designated foreign adversary,” Martin said in a press release. “Let this indictment serve as a warning to all who seek to betray or exploit the United States: law enforcement will find you and hold you accountable.”

China’s interest in penetrating the Federal Reserve’s data is longstanding. In 2022, former Senator Bob Portman, R-Ohio, released a report that found that the Fed had identified 13 staffers in 2015 and 2017 that had ties to Chinese espionage recruitment programs. In response to that report, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank had “robust policies, protections and controls in place” to counter Chinese espionage.