Security News > 2020 > March > Tour guide/Chinese spy gets four years for SD card dead drops
The official - whom Peng eventually figured out was working for the MSS - asked Peng to use his citizenship in the US to assist the official with "Matters of interest" to the PRC. After that, Peng admitted, he got paid at least $30,000 for running data over to China over the course of about 3.5 years.
In Beijing, Peng meets with agents of the Ministry of State Security, including the People's Republic of China official with whom Peng had been communicating, and delivers the SD card to MSS. A PRC official uses coded language to tell Peng that another dead drop will occur on April 23, 2016.
Hours later, Peng returns, observes that the money had been retrieved and determines that a cigarette pack with an SD card inside of it has been left for him in place of the money.
I don't know how much tour guides or traditional Chinese medicine practitioners make in San Francisco, but Peng, apparently, wasn't doing bad. At least, that's what one might surmise from the FBI's telling of the investigation: after agents traced the cars used to pick up the SD card packages, they found a Lexus, a Fiat and a Mercedes parked at Peng's house and registered to him and/or his wife.
Peng will now spend years in prison for compromising the security of the United States.