Former AU researcher Gao Zhan will be sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to unlawful export of items to China and tax fraud back in November. She faces up to 10 years in prison, according to the plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis will hear the case at 9 a.m. Friday. Gao pled guilty Nov. 26, the result of an investigation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, according to the office of Paul J. McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
"This was an intricate crime and a complex investigation," McNulty said in a press release. "I congratulate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Defensive Criminal Investigative Service for their outstanding work and service to our nation."
Gao pleaded guilty to exporting 80 Military Intel 486 DX2 microprocessors to China between October 2000 and January 2001, according to the release. The resulting payment of $539,296 was not reported on Gao's 2001 tax form, allowing for the charge of tax fraud.
"The technology exported in this case is tightly controlled for a good reason - it can be used for sensitive military systems," Special Agent-in-Charge Kevin Delli-Colli of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in the release. "Keeping such technology from falling into the wrong hands is one of the highest priorities of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security."
The plea agreement lists the maximum penalties as "ten years of imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, full restitution, a special assessment, and three years of supervised release," on the export charge and "three years of imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, full restitution, a special assessment, and three years of supervised release" for tax fraud.
Overall, Gao may face up to 13 years in prison.
Gao worked at AU from fall 2000 until September 2002 as a scholar-in-residence in the School of International Service, The Eagle previously reported.
She was detained by the Chinese government in 2001 under suspicion for espionage and was released July 26, 2001, after 166 days of detainment. The Washington Post suggests that the detainment was a cover-up to throw off any investigation of the export.
In an interview with The Post, Gao said, "I am not an agent, nor a double agent for any government. I'm just purely a scholar, a sociologist trying to bring my dreams to reality. It's that simple."
Gao's husband, Xue Donghua, was charged with filing a false tax form and faces "a maximum of one year imprisonment, a fine of $100,000, full restitution, a special assessment and one year of supervised release," according to his plea agreement.
