• @stoly
    link
    159 months ago

    I’ll never get why people think they can get away with this stuff.

    • FuglyDuck
      link
      English
      18
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      You do it once, with something small. nobody notices.
      You do it again… because now they got their hooks in you… that’s when you get caught, but you don’t have a chioce, so you do it anyhow.

      These kinds of things frequently start small and grow, they don’t get turned into spies overnight.

      • bedrooms
        link
        fedilink
        49 months ago

        Plus your lover tells you to do that, and you can’t consult your wife or anybody else. Turns out, your lover has been a honey trap all along.

    • Twinklebreeze
      link
      69 months ago

      Some people are getting away with this right now, and we don’t hear about it because we don’t know.

      • @SkybreakerEngineer
        link
        English
        39 months ago

        Some people are getting away with it right now, and the only reason we know about it is because it got so bad the FBI couldn’t ignore it anymore

    • Pons_Aelius
      link
      fedilink
      49 months ago

      Because a ridiculously small amount of cash is enough for most people to do this sort of shit.

      • partial_accumen
        link
        10
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        Seeing some of the payouts for these bribes, it is absolutely ridiculously small. Like the one in the article:

        According to US officials, Zhao, who was stationed at a naval base north of Los Angeles, received nearly $15,000 from the Chinese intelligence officer between August 2021 and May 2023.

        I can’t imagine risking my military career and risk spending time in military prison (much less being a traitor to my country) for the cost of a used 2012 Toyota Camry with 77k miles.

        • @Serinus
          link
          49 months ago

          I’m just going to assume the $15,000 was all up front, and all of the spying after that was blackmail after having accepted a bribe.

      • tiredofsametab
        link
        fedilink
        39 months ago

        In some cases, there have been threats against family in those countries IIRC. How credible, etc. is not something I know.