A former Grand Rapids man pleaded guilty today to conspiring to spy for the People’s Republic of China.

Glenn Duffie Shriver, 28, told a federal judge at a court hearing in Alexandria, Va., that he was befriended by Chinese intelligence officers while studying in Shanghai, agreed to spy for them and was in the process of finalizing a job at the Central Intelligence Agency when U.S. authorities found out what he was up to.

Although the Chinese paid him $70,000 for his services, prosecutors said, it appears no secrets were passed. Prosecutors didn’t explain how he was caught.

He was arrested in June in Detroit while trying to board a plane for South Korea.

“Mr. Shriver threw away his education, his career and his future when he chose to position himself to spy for the PRC,” U.S. Attorney Neil McBride in eastern Virginia, said in a statement announcing the plea. Under an agreement with prosecutors, Shriver faces a possible four years in prison at sentencing Jan. 21, 2011, in Alexandria.

Court papers said Shriver was an undergraduate international relations student at Grand Valley State University who spent a year in 2002-2003 studying at East China Normal University in Shanghai.

After graduating from Grand Valley in 2004, he returned to Shanghai and responded to an advertisement soliciting people to write a political paper.

Prosecutors said he was contacted by a woman named “Amanda,” who paid him $120 for the paper he wrote. Later, she introduced him to two men, identified as Wu and Tang. All three were intelligence officers for the People’s Republic, prosecutors said.

Over the course of several meetings, the three intelligence officers and Shriver hatched a scheme for Shriver to land a job at the U.S. State Department or CIA and pass classified information to the Chinese, prosecutors said.

Would be spy busted