Chinese professor stole hard drive secrets for Huawei, US government charges

Enlarge / Visitors check out new Huawei smartphones at the 2019 IFA home electronics and appliances trade fair Berlin. (credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A Chinese computer science professor named Bo Mao is facing wire fraud charges after he was arrested last month by US authorities.

The document formally charging Mao in Brooklyn federal court charges that he conspired to "defraud a company headquartered in the Northern District of California." Other court filings, including a criminal complaint filed in a Texas federal court last month, help fill in the details. As Reuters first reported, Mao is accused of stealing trade secrets from a startup called CNEX Labs on behalf of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

The prosecution is the latest effort by the Trump administration to punish Huawei for alleged industrial espionage. In January, the US government indicted Huawei after employees attempted to steal proprietary information about a T-Mobile robot used to test mobile phones.

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