Federal Judge Revokes Naturalization of Couple Who Stole Children's Hospital Trade Secrets and Shared Them with China
On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Judge James E. Simmons Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California had on March 30 entered an order revoking the naturalized U.S. citizenship of husband and wife Li Chen and Yu Zhou, finding that they had illegally procured their naturalization. The two had worked as research scientists focused on exosome isolation at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
According to the department, Chen, a Chinese national, entered the United States in 2007 on an H-1B specialty occupation visa sponsored by Nationwide Children's Hospital, adjusted to permanent resident in 2011, and naturalized in 2016. Zhou, also a Chinese national, entered in 2005 as an exchange visitor, arrived again in 2008 on an H-1B visa sponsored by the hospital, adjusted to permanent resident in 2011 as Chen's derivative spouse, and naturalized in 2017. In 2019, both were arrested for stealing medical trade secrets from their employment. The indictments alleged that the couple personally benefited from the theft and sale of the hospital's trade secrets by establishing their own company and acquiring shares in another company that used the stolen secrets, and that both received funding from China's State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs. In total, they jointly received nearly $1.5 million from transactions involving the exosome isolation intellectual property.
Each previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Chen was sentenced to 30 months in prison and Zhou to 33 months, each with three years of supervised release, and they were ordered to pay over $2.6 million in restitution jointly and severally. The court held that their wire fraud conspiracy constituted a crime involving moral turpitude that left them without the good moral character required to naturalize, and that their crimes were also unlawful acts reflecting adversely on their moral character, with no extenuating circumstances, providing a separate basis to revoke their citizenship.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi said that gaining citizenship after committing serious crimes against the American people is an unacceptable abuse of the immigration system. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division said naturalization is not a right but a privilege given by the generous people of the nation. The cases were investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations and the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor; the underlying criminal cases were prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio.
Related: Former Google Engineer Linwei Ding Convicted on All 14 Counts in SI Trade Secrets Case
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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