Purdue prof, wife plead guilty in $1.3M scheme, pocketing federal research money

WEST LAFAYETTE – A Purdue University professor and his wife, accused of funneling more that $1 million in National Science Foundation research money into a private company that served as a front to pay for their own personal expenses, pleaded guilty Friday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Qingyou Han, a mechanical engineering technology professor at Purdue since 2007 and director of Purdue’s Center for Materials Processing Research, and his wife, Lu Shao, pleaded guilty to felony charge of wire fraud on behalf of themselves and Shao’s company, Hans Tech of Lakewood, Ohio.

They had been scheduled to go to trial in U.S. District Court next week.

The case stems from a July 2018 indictment that outlined a scheme that defrauded the National Science Foundation into putting $1.3 million into Hans Tech through the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, which are used by the NSF to promote the progress of science through innovative small businesses.

Read more: https://www.jconline.com/story/news/2019/10/19/purdue-prof-wife-plead-guilty-1-3-m-scheme-pocketing-federal-research-money/4035498002/
(Lafayette Journal & Courier)