Harvard chemist charged with fraud

Abstract

Charles M. Lieber, the chair of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department at Harvard University, was arrested on Jan. 28 and charged with fraud. The complaint alleges that Lieber hid his financial ties to China’s Thousand Talents program from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DOD), as well as from his university. Initially held in custody as a flight risk, Lieber appeared at a Jan. 30 hearing shackled and wearing an orange jumpsuit. His bail was set at $1 million cash. As conditions of release, he also had to agree to surrender his and his wife’s passports, to disclose foreign bank accounts, and to have no contact with Wuhan University of Technology (WUT), Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Lieber is charged with a single felony count for making false statements to US government agencies. The maximum sentence for such a charge