SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - Jurors convicted a Chinese-born engineer Thursday of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, including data on an electronic propulsion system that could make submarines virtually undetectable. Chi Mak also was found guilty of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, attempting to violate export control laws and making false statements to the FBI. Prosecutors had dropped a charge of actually exporting defense articles.| Goodbye, and don't bother writing. |
Mak faces up to 45 years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 10, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples said. It took jurors close to three days to reach a verdict after a six-week trial.
The government accused Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, of taking thousands of pages of documents from his defense contractor employer, Power Paragon of Anaheim, and giving them to his brother, who passed them along to Chinese authorities over a number of years. Chi Mak's wife, brother and other relatives also have been indicted and are to go on trial together June 5.
Mak, 66, was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in their luggage that contained documents on a submarine propulsion system, a solid-state power switch for ships and a Power Point presentation on the future of power electronics.
Mak acknowledged during the trial that he copied classified documents from his employer and kept copies in his office. He maintained he didn't realize at the time that making the copies was illegal.
| He also didn't know that encrypting all that information onto a CD was illegal, and he certainly didn't know that having family members deliver it to Chinese intelligence was illegal. He's kinda slow even though he's an engineer. |
| Sure, sure, whatever, file the appeal. Bye. |