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The Justice Department charged a former University of Florida professor with fraudulently obtaining $1.75 million in grant money from the National Institutes of Health while hiding his connections to the Chinese government and his efforts to profit in China.
Lin Yang, who had resided in Tampa but went back to China in 2019, was charged with six counts of wire fraud and four counts of making false statements to the U.S. government in an indictment returned by a grand jury in December but unsealed Wednesday.
The Justice Department said Yang obtained a $1.75 million grant from NIH to develop an imaging informatics tool for muscles known as “MuscleMiner.” But at the same time, he set up a business in China known as “Deep Informatics” and promoted it in China as being based on research funded by the U.S. government. Yang was also accepted into China’s Thousand Talents Program through China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says that school is one of the “Seven Sons of National Defense” connected to the People’s Liberation Army.