FBI warns students abroad: Beware of becoming spies

The Federal Bureau of investigation has come out with a new video warning American college students studying abroad to be on the lookout for foreign spy recruiters.

The 30-minute video titled 'Game of Pawns' shows how foreign intelligence agencies recruit US students to become secret agents. Young Americans studying abroad are prime targets for foreign intelligence officials, the FBI warns, citing the well-known case of Glenn Duffie Shriver.

In 2010, the former Michigan student pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide national defense information to intelligence officers of China. He was sentenced to four years in prison. Shriver had gone to Shanghai in 2004 for his junior year of college, only to end up being recruited by Chinese agents. He was paid to write "papers" for various Chinese clients and later agreed to apply for jobs in China with American agencies such as the state department.

The FBI had been watching him for a while and Shriver confessed not long after being picked up by the Central Intelligence Agency. His experience is chronicled in the FBI's new video, the New York Daily News reported.

"We'd like American students traveling overseas to view this video before leaving the US so they're able to recognise when they're being targeted and/or recruited," the agency said in a statement.