"All us lawyers have met with the couple and they said they don't want to appeal," said Humphrey's defending lawyer Zhai Jian.

Humphrey was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in jail last week while Yu was sentenced to two years in jail. The couple, who ran risk consultancy ChinaWhys, were charged with illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens and selling the information.

They were detained last year following work they did for British pharmaceuticals giant GSK, which is at the center of a separate government corruption investigation involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Miral Fahmy)