A State Department official arrested earlier this month and charged with providing secrets to unauthorized people received payments in Chinese money, according to an FBI affidavit.
The official, Michael Charles Schena, 42, held a “top secret” security clearance and was arrested March 5. An Alexandria, Virginia, resident, Mr. Schena was charged with conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information to unauthorized users.
Details of the case remain sealed, but according to the affidavit by an FBI counterintelligence agent, Mr. Schena has been serving as a Caribbean desk officer in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Beginning in April 2022, he was contacted on a social media platform and asked by a person identified only as “Jason” to provide consulting services in exchange for cash from an international company.
Between May 2022 and March 2023, Mr. Schena received thousands of dollars in payments in exchange for photographing and sharing classified documents he accessed on a State Department computer.
An iCloud database search obtained by the FBI revealed that an invoice from August 2024 stated that Mr. Schena received $10,000 and an iPhone 14 phone from Jason, the affidavit said. The invoice stated that the cash “equals 79841 CNY.”
“CNY is thought to be a reference to the Chinese yuan renminbi, the official currency of the People’s Republic of China,” the affidavit said.
“Based on my training and experience, I believe the referenced iPhone 14 was intended as a covert communication device for Schena to image and/or transmit information without law enforcement detection to others who are not otherwise authorized to receive it.”
China for nearly a decade has been using LinkedIn and other business-oriented social media platforms to recruit spies, according to U.S. counterintelligence officials.
In 2020, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center produced a video highlighting China’s use of social media platforms to recruit Americans with access to sensitive and classified material.
The film was based on the case of former CIA officer Kevin Mallory, who was convicted of spying for China in 2019. Mallory was recruited by Chinese intelligence through LinkedIn by a spy handler posing as an employee of a think tank based in Shanghai.
The case involved a cellphone that the Chinese gave to Mallory. It was used to transmit CIA secrets, including clues to identify human sources who had helped the U.S. government.
Camera surveillance of Mr. Schena’s State Department workstation revealed that on Feb. 27, 2025, he logged into the State Department classified information system known as CLASSNET and accessed at least five documents relating to “the diplomatic relationship of the U.S.” without further information.
The documents labeled “secret” were then photographed by Mr. Schena on the computer screen using a white mobile phone, the affidavit said.
A lawyer for Mr. Schena did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The suspect was ordered by a magistrate to be held in jail until trial.
Mr. Schena first gained access to classified information in 2006, the affidavit said.
His LinkedIn page states he received a master’s degree in international relations from Louisiana State University in 2006.
In a 2020 interview with OCA Magazine, which is focused on Eurasia, Mr. Schena said he joined the Foreign Service based on recommendations from two professors at LSU. He also spent time in China.
“While at LSU I had my first major work outside the U.S. experience,” he stated. “I served as an English teacher at a school in Shaoxing, PRC in 2005. As luck would have it, I was accepted into a State Department internship program in 2006. From the internship I was hired in 2007 as a Foreign Affairs Officer.”
During his career, Mr. Schena said, he worked at U.S. embassies in Kazakhstan and Hungary.
