A Justice Department crackdown on secret Chinese influence inside American universities has expanded to Arkansas, where a longtime professor has been charged with concealing payments from Beijing while receiving federal funding from NASA.
A criminal indictment unsealed Monday evening revealed that Simon Saw-Teong Ang, 63, of Fayetteville, Ark., a professor since 1988 at the University of Arkansas and the director of its High Density Electronics Center, was arrested on a wire fraud charge.
The arrest comes after a major case brought in January against a high-profile Harvard University researcher.
The Arkansas complaint alleges Ang had close ties with the Chinese government and Chinese companies, and failed to disclose those ties, including payments, as required while receiving $5 million in grant money from NASA over several years.