THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A researcher was convicted on April 7, 2022, of illegally concealing work he was doing for China while employed at the University of Kansas.
U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson continues to weigh a defense motion, however, to dismiss the case against Feng “Franklin” Tao of Lawrence, Kansas. Jurors found him guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements for not disclosing on conflict-of-interest forms that he had been named to a Chinese talent program, the Changjiang Professorship, on grant applications. As part of that program, he traveled to China to set up a laboratory and recruit staff for Fuzhou University, telling the University of Kansas he was in Germany instead.
Prosecutor Adam Barry described it as “an elaborate lie” to defraud the university, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Defense attorney Peter Zeidenberg countered that Tao was merely moonlighting and stressed that Tao remained such a prolific researcher that the University of Kansas honored him in April 2019 — just months before his arrest. He contended that Tao completed all the research that he received grants to conduct and said his work in China wasn’t against the rules because he wasn’t paid for it.
Zeidenberg also noted that Tao listed his affiliation with both schools in some papers, suggesting he wasn’t hiding it. The case against Tao was part of what the Justice Department called its China Initiative, an effort created in 2018 to crack down on trade-secret theft and economic espionage. The department ended the program in February 2022, though officials say they still intend to pursue the threat from China.
Tao, who was born in China and moved to the U.S. in 2002, began working in August 2014 at the University of Kansas’ Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis, which conducts research on sustainable technology to conserve natural resources and energy.
With Robinson still awaiting written arguments on the defense motion to dismiss the case, no sentencing date has been set. Tao faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine up to U.S. $250,000 on the wire fraud counts, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
IMAGE CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS