LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Chinese-American engineer and two relatives who allegedly conspired to steal sensitive information about Navy warships and smuggle it to China were indicted Tuesday on federal charges, authorities said. The grand jury indictment charges Chi Mak, 65, his wife and brother with acting as agents of a foreign government without prior notification to the U.S. attorney general, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Federal officials said Mak took computer disks from Anaheim defense contractor Power Paragon, where he was lead engineer on a sensitive research project involving propulsion systems for Navy warships. He and his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, 62, then copied the information to CDs and delivered them to Tai Wang Mak, 56, who was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong on Oct. 28 with his wife, Fuk Heung Li, an FBI affidavit said. From there, the brother allegedly planned to travel to Guangzhou, China, to meet a contact. All four were arrested on Oct. 28. Though Li was accused in an FBI affidavit of aiding the others, she was not indicted Tuesday. Chi Mak and his wife are naturalized U.S. citizens originally from China. Mak's brother is a Chinese national and director for the Phoenix North American Chinese Channel. The brother's wife also is a Chinese national. Although it is not alleged in the indictment, authorities have said they recovered restricted documents on the DDX Destroyer - known as the "destroyer of the future" - that had been produced by the Naval Surface Warfare Center. Also seized were documents on how to reconfigure a damaged ship after an attack, as well as two lists in Chinese that asked Chi Mak to get documents dealing with submarine torpedoes, electromagnetic artillery, early warning technology to detect incoming missiles and defenses against nuclear attack, prosecutors said. Lets fill the country up with immigrants, just what we needed.
Man, it just drives me nuts! our criminal government treats the chinese better than americans and this is the way they thank us! how many billion dollar trade defict do we have with these communists? I heard china is building a HUGE military...an offensive not defensive military.. and guess whos pay'in for it! plus the gov (clinton) gives them military secrets, or bush lets them steal them!
44 indicted in immigrant visa scam A federal grand jury in California has indicted 44 persons suspected of conspiring to obtain fraudulent immigrant visas for hundreds of Chinese and Vietnamese nationals based on "sham marriages" to U.S. citizens. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said yesterday that 13 indictments in the case, unsealed this week, stem from a three-year investigation known as "Operation Newlywed Game," one of the largest marriage fraud probes undertaken in the United States. Mr. Boyd said ICE agents discovered that those involved in the scheme went to elaborate lengths to make the sham marriages appear legitimate, even posing for wedding pictures, fabricating love letters and creating fraudulent joint tax returns. "These arrests should send a clear message that ICE is working aggressively to ensure that this kind of criminal activity does not go unchecked or unpunished," said Loraine Brown, an ICE special agent-in-charge who heads the Los Angeles field office. Officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), where marriage petitions are processed, noticed the irregularities and alerted ICE agents, sparking the investigation, Mr. Boyd said. But documents obtained by The Washington Times suggest that such a response was the exception and not the rule. A top CIS official said in an October e-mail that ICE regularly declined 70 percent of the fraud cases forwarded to the agency, including those of sham marriages. Other documents also said the Houston CIS office stopped investigating individual cases of sham marriages, which terrorists have used to remain legally in the United States. Federal agents and independent analysts said sham marriages are a common tool used by terrorists to remain in the United States. Janice L. Kephart, staff counsel for the September 11 commission, said in a recent report that of 20 terrorists she had studied, 18 had married U.S. citizens and 10 had arranged sham marriages. "Marrying an American provides an entry toward a permanent legal status and eventual naturalization," she said. In the ICE probe, Mr. Boyd said that at the heart of the conspiracy were the "facilitators," who charged up to $60,000 to orchestrate sham marriages for foreign nationals with U.S. citizens. He said the facilitators used "recruiters," who typically received $1,000 for each referral to identify U.S. citizens willing to marry the aliens. Because the foreign nationals often resided in Vietnam or China, he said, the facilitators would make arrangements for U.S. citizen "petitioners" to go overseas to marry the aliens. After the sham marriage, he said, the facilitators assisted the petitioners and aliens with filing bogus immigration petitions. The petitioners were paid thousands of dollars, plus travel fees. Mr. Boyd said the facilitators also coached the petitioners and the aliens on what to say during status hearings at CIS. Because many of the facilitators used the same petitioners more than once, some of the U.S. citizens involved in the scheme had multiple "spouses" and submitted numerous fraudulent immigration petitions. He also said ICE agents searched a house in Westminster, Calif., and found records for MT Travel, a travel agency investigators suspect was used as a front to facilitate the marriage fraud. The agency is now defunct. Those arrested included Julie Tran, Kathy Tran, Minh Hong Duong, Hoa Hoc Phung, Cuong Thoai Diep, Thuy Linh Thi Tran, Paul Hill, Victor Quoc Truong, Lien Tam Vo, Alex Pham and Tuong Vi Thi Phan. They face charges ranging from conspiracy and fraud to making false statements and inducing aliens to enter the country illegally.
Yeah, instead of worrying about the Russians the most as we did in the Cold War now we need to keep an eye on the other nation on the planet that would think about attacking us.
