Federal prosecutors alleged Tuesday that a Kansas researcher illegally kept his work with a Chinese university secret, while the defense countered that he was merely “moonlighting."
The conflicting portrayals came during opening statements in the trial of Feng “Franklin” Tao in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, on charges of wire and program fraud. He is accused of not disclosing on conflict-of-interest forms the work he was doing for China while employed at the University of Kansas — something federal prosecutors contend is a scheme to defraud the university, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
