Chinese Professor Arrested in Texas Has Wire Fraud Case Reassigned as Judge Donnelly Finds No 'Presumptive' Link With Huawei Probe
A new judge in the Eastern District of New York is now handling the case of a Chinese citizen accused of stealing an American company's intellectual property on behalf of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, according to orders filed Monday.
November 25, 2019 at 05:56 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on New York Law Journal
Professor Bo Mao departs the Eastern District courthouse in September. Photo: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg
A third judge in the Eastern District of New York is now handling the case of a Chinese citizen arrested in Texas in August, where he was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Bo Mao, a computer science teacher at UT Arlington, is accused of stealing an American company's intellectual property on behalf of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, according to orders filed Monday.
U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen of the Eastern District of New York was assigned the case after her colleague, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York, found the case is not presumptively related to another case on Donnelly's docket.
Federal prosecutors say Mao helped to steal intellectual property for a Chinese company, which is widely believed to be Huawei.
Soon after Mao was arrested, his case was moved to Brooklyn and quickly reassigned from U.S. District Judge Frederic Block of the Eastern District of New York to Donnelly. Prosecutors had filed a motion to designate the case as related to another case, but that motion has remained under seal, and Mao's defense attorneys complained in court Thursday that they haven't seen it.
Donnelly's docket includes a major case involving Huawei, though she has not explicitly confirmed whether that case was the subject of the relatedness motion, which was filed Aug. 28.
She came close in court Thursday, when she was discussing an upcoming conflict-of-interest hearing related to payments to Mao's attorneys.
Prosecutors say an American subsidiary of Huawei has agreed to pay for Mao's Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Thompson & Knight attorneys.
In a letter to Donnelly, assistant U.S. attorney Alexander Solomon explained that Mao's alleged association with Huawei is a key fact of the government's case, so the payment agreements deserve special scrutiny.
Donnelly appointed Curcio counsel for Mao and set a hearing date of Dec. 3. She also mentioned that the payments were coming from a defendant in the case discussed in the sealed relatedness motion.
While the Curcio question now moves to Chen's courtroom, Donnelly issued her order Monday on the relatedness motion.
"I have reviewed the Government's letter motion and conclude that the cases are not presumptively related," she wrote. "Indeed, the Government concedes as much in the letter, asserting that the cases may not be presumptively related. I find that relating the cases would not result in significant savings of judicial resources."
Read more:
Fast Track Urged for Conflict-of-Interest Inquiry for Chinese Professor Linked to Huawei
US Judge Refuses to Reveal What Brought Chinese Professor's Fraud Case to NY
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