Former Kansas professor convicted of hiding links to Chinese government

Feng (Franklin) Tao, former University of Kansas professor, was found guilty of being an employee of a Chinese government affiliated university and hiding this fact. Now he is convicted of of three counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements by a federal jury.

Investigation resolved that Tao was working on a research funded by the U.S. government being at the same time an employee of a federal university of China.

According to the Department of Justice, four years ago Tao accepted a position at China’s Fuzhou University as a Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Professor. His contract obliged him to work for the university full-time.

During this period he maintained a research under agreements between the U.S. government and the University of Kansas. He made the institution submit hundreds of thousands of dollars in reimbursement requests to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

The trial resolved that Tao is guilty and now he is about to spend up to 20 years in prison, also a fine of $250,000 for wire fraud. Moreover, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a a fine of $250,000 for each grant program that he was engaged in.