A Chinese woman living in Connecticut sought to buy military equipment commonly used to gauge the power of nuclear explosions and export it to her native country, a federal grand jury charged.
Qing Li, 39, first contacted undercover federal agents by e-mail in April to ask about buying sensors, according to the indictment. She was working with a co-conspirator in China who was trying to buy the devices for a state-run agency and arranged conference calls with the undercover investigators, according to the indictment.
A criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday in San Diego said Qing Li asked for as many as 30 of the US$2,500 sensors to be shipped to Hong Kong and then on to mainland China as "a favor for a friend in China."
She indicated in later messages that her friend might want as many as 100 of the devices if they worked well.
The co-conspirator, who has not been named or indicted and is not in custody, allegedly told investigators during an Oct. 2 conference call with Qing Li that the sensors were for "a special agency, a scientific research institute in China."
The credit-card-size devices, made by Endevco Corp of San Juan Capistrano, can also be used for developing missiles or artillery. It is illegal to export the sensors, which the government has classified as defense articles, without government approval.
A lawyer for Endevco said the company was cooperating with the investigation. According to the complaint, Endevco sales staff referred the woman to the undercover storefront operation after she called the company looking to buy the sensors.
Qing Li, 39, never received sensors from the undercover investigators, officials said, and it was unclear whether she ever procured weapons for export.
Her attorney in New York, Paul Goldberger, did not immediately return a call on Thursday.
"These devices are simply not for export to China or anywhere else without explicit permission from the US government," said Julie Myers, Homeland Security assistant secretary, who oversees illegal export investigations as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"Accelerometers are a designated defense article frequently used in missiles, `smart bombs' and other major weapons systems and in the wrong hands, could prove catastrophic," she said.
The defendant is a legal resident who came to the US in 1996.
She was arrested on Sunday at New York's Kennedy Airport as she checked in for an Air China flight to Beijing, according to investigators for ICE.
A federal judge has ordered her held in New York, pending a hearing in San Diego, where the grand jury charges were filed. She faces up to five years in prison and a fine if convicted.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,