On Oct. 26, 2016, in the District of Kansas, Wengui Yan pleaded guilty\u00a0to one count of making false statements to the FBI while working as a geneticist for the U.S. Department\u00a0of Agriculture at the Dale Bumpers National Research Center in Stuttgart, Arkansas. Yan, a scientist who\u00a0worked with rice, admitted that he knew about plans to steal samples and send them to China. In his plea,\u00a0Yan admitted that on Aug. 7, 2013, agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection found stolen seeds in\u00a0the luggage of a group of visitors from China preparing to board a plane to return home. The group had\u00a0visited the facility in Stuttgart. Yan admitted that before the Chinese group arrived, a co-defendant in\u00a0Kansas had asked him for seeds and Yan had declined because the seeds were protected. The codefendant\u00a0told Yan about other individuals seeking to steal samples of the seeds. When the delegation\u00a0came to Stuttgart, Yan traveled with them to a rice farm where he knew they would have an opportunity\u00a0to steal seeds. After the theft, Yan denied knowing about the plans to steal the seeds or about the theft\u00a0itself. Investigators also learned that Yan attempted to cover up a trip he made to China to visit the crops\u00a0research institute that sent the delegation to the United States. Co-defendant Weiqiang Zhang was\u00a0convicted at trial in February 2017. Both defendants are awaiting sentencing. This case was investigated\u00a0by the FBI and CBP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Protected Rice Seeds to ChinaOn Oct. 26, 2016, in the District of Kansas, Wengui Yan pleaded guilty\u00a0to one count of making false statements to the FBI while working as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3883,"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions\/3883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremy-wu.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}