On March 30, Judge James E. Simmons Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, entered an order revoking the naturalized U.S. citizenship of husband and wife Li Chen and Yu Zhou, after finding they illegally procured their naturalization.
Chen and Zhou each previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which the court determined constituted moral crimes.
The court found that both Chen and Zhou were ineligible to naturalize because they committed unlawful acts that adversely reflected on their moral character, for which there were no extenuating circumstances.
“Gaining citizenship after committing serious crimes against the American people is an unacceptable abuse of our immigration system,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “These latest denaturalizations illustrate this Department of Justice's focus on ensuring that citizenship remains a privilege to obtain, not a right to abuse.”
Chen, a Chinese national, entered the United States in 2007 on an H-1B Specialty Occupation visa sponsored by Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH). In 2011, after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved a Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker as an alien of extraordinary ability, Chen adjusted her immigration status to permanent resident. Zhou, also a Chinese national, entered the United States in 2005 as an exchange visitor. In 2008, Zhou arrived in the United States again on an H-1B Specialty Occupation visa sponsored by NCH, and he adjusted his immigration status to permanent resident in 2011 as the derivative spouse of his wife, Chen. Chen naturalized in 2016, and Zhou naturalized in 2017.
“Naturalization is not a right — it’s a privilege given by the generous people of this nation,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “When the generosity of America’s immigration process is abused, our system works to correct such abuse. Full stop.”
In 2019, both Chen and Zhou were arrested for criminal conduct involving the theft of medical trade secrets used in the course of their employment as NCH research scientists focused on exosome isolation. Each indictment alleged that the couple personally benefited from their theft and sale of NCH trade secrets by establishing their own company and by acquiring shares in another company that utilized the stolen trade secrets.
In addition, both Chen and Zhou received funding from the People’s Republic of China’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs.
In total, defendants jointly received nearly $1.5 million in transactions resulting from their exchange of exosome isolation intellectual property. Chen was subsequently sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and Zhou was sentenced to 33 months in prison and three years of supervised release, with over $2.6 million in restitution ordered to be paid jointly and severally between them.
The court held that the couple’s wire fraud — and thus their conspiracy to commit wire fraud — constituted a crime involving moral turpitude that warranted the revocation of Defendants’ naturalization.
The court additionally determined that, given the lack of any extenuating circumstances, Zhou and Chen’s crimes of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit trade secret theft constituted unlawful acts that reflected adversely on their moral character. So, these crimes represented a separate basis to revoke their U.S. citizenship.
These cases were investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). The cases were litigated by the Affirmative Litigation Unit of the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation. The underlying criminal cases were prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio.
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