U.S. District Judge James E. Simmons Jr. ordered the revocation of naturalized U.S. citizenship for the Chinese couple Li Chen and Yu Zhou on March 30, 2026. The former Nationwide Children’s Hospital researchers in Columbus, Ohio, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and wire fraud after stealing proprietary research to found a biotech company in China.
They received nearly $1.5 million in proceeds and funding from China’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs. Chen was sentenced to 30 months in prison; Zhou to 33 months. The court ruled the crimes involved moral turpitude, disqualifying them from the good moral character required for naturalization. Attorney General Pam Bondi called it an abuse of the immigration system.
Attorney General Pam Bondi began, “Gaining citizenship after committing serious crimes against the American people is an unacceptable abuse of our immigration system. These latest denaturalizations illustrate this Department of Justice’s focus on ensuring that citizenship remains a privilege to obtain, not a right to abuse.”
A DOJ press release noted, “On March 30, Judge James E. Simmons Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California entered an order revoking the naturalized U.S. citizenship of husband and wife Li Chen and Yu Zhou, finding they illegally procured their naturalization.”
The press release added, “Chen and Zhou each previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which the court determined constituted crimes involving moral turpitude that prevented them from having the good moral character necessary to naturalize.”
The same source said, “In 2019, both Chen and Zhou were arrested for criminal conduct involving the theft of medical trade secrets used in the course of their employment as NCH research scientists focused on exosome isolation.”
“In total, Defendants jointly received nearly $1.5 million in transactions resulting from their exchange of exosome isolation intellectual property. Chen was subsequently sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and Zhou was sentenced to 33 months in prison and three years of supervised release, with over $2.6 million in restitution ordered to be paid jointly and severally between them,” the DOJ asserted.
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“Each indictment alleged that the couple personally benefited from their theft and sale of NCH trade secrets by establishing their own company and by acquiring shares in another company that utilized the stolen trade secrets. In addition, both Chen and Zhou received funding from the People’s Republic of China’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs,” the DOJ explained.
Laying out the case, the officials said, “The court additionally determined that, given the lack of any extenuating circumstances, Zhou and Chen’s crimes of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit trade secret theft constituted unlawful acts that reflected adversely on their moral character, and therefore these crimes represented a separate basis to revoke their U.S. citizenship.”
The document concluded, “These cases were investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). The cases were litigated by the Affirmative Litigation Unit of the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation.”
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