Chinese spies 'used LinkedIn to lure me to Hong Kong' – The Telegraph

A former spin doctor for Nigel Farage has claimed Chinese spies used LinkedIn to lure him to Hong Kong as part of a years-long effort to recruit British turncoats.Gawain Towler, a former spokesman for the UK Independence Party and then the Brexit Party, said Beijing’s spies had offered him thousands of euros in used banknotes as they flew him to the former British colony.The revelation comes after The Times unmasked a network of fake LinkedIn accounts operated by Chinese intelligence and used to target Britons.Mr Towler said he was lured into the trap after responding to messages offering consulting work and a business meeting in Hong Kong, a financial hub that was a UK dependent territory for a century before being handed back to China in 1997.Chinese, Russian and Iranian spies have all been using Microsoft-owned LinkedIn to try to recruit potential intelligence agents, sources told the Telegraph.Mr Towler said that in 2018 he arrived at a Hong Kong hotel selected by his online contacts. He said his Chinese handlers offered him a mobile phone with a pre-installed espionage app for sharing confidential documents through Instagram.“Inside that app, I could take a photograph of a document and that document could then be
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