Woman sentenced to prison for acting as an illegal agent of the PRC

Voice of America

The technology for an underwater drone, pictured above, was smuggled to China.

AMIN YU, 55, of Orlando, Florida, was sentenced Monday (Sept. 27) to 21 months in federal prison for acting in the U.S. as an illegal agent of a foreign government by U.S. District Judge Roy B. Dalton, Jr.

According to the plea agreement, from at least 2002 to February 2014, at the direction of co-conspirators working for Harbin Engineering University (HEU, a PRC-controlled entity) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Yu obtained systems and components for marine submersible vehicles from companies in the U.S. She then illegally exported those items to the PRC for use by her co-conspirators in the development of marine submersible vehicles including unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles for HEU and other state-controlled entities. 

Yu illegally exported items by failing to file Electronic Export Information (EEI), as required by U.S. law and by also filing false EEI. Yu completed and caused the completion of export-related documents in which she significantly undervalued the items that she had exported and provided false end user information for those items.

Yu, who is a citizen of China and a legal permanent resident of the United States, was also charged for conspiring to commit international money laundering during the course of her activities in behalf of the PRC.

“Amin Yu made hundreds of thousands of dollars by acting covertly in Orlando on behalf of the Chinese government and by skirting U.S. export laws and regulations,” said U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley.

This case was investigated by the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, and the NCIS. 

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