LOS ANGELES (CN) - A naturalized U.S. citizen originally from China appeared in court Monday after his weekend arrest on charges of exporting over 200 sophisticated computer chips to China, a sensitive technology which can be used in military radar systems and specialized communications.
"There's been a lot of recent discussion in academic circles and the media about efforts by the People's Republic of China to obtain U.S. technology" says Thom Mrozek, the Public Affairs Officer of the U.S. Department of Justice.
William Chai-Wai Tsu, 61, is a resident of Beijing but worked as the vice president of Cheerway Inc., a company in Hacienda Heights. Under the charges, Tsu used the company since March of 2008 to buy sophisticated integrated circuits from RFMW, a distributor of electronic components, and send them to China without the required approval from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Tsu repeatedly told RFMW that he was not exporting the circuits and signed a letter of assurance pledging that he understood U.S. export regulations.
RFMW began to suspect Tsu after he returned some circuits because of quality issues. The distributor noticed that the circuits had been handled "primitively" and RFMW employees remarked that "a good assembly house in the U.S. wouldn't handle them like that."
The handling and a 30-day delay of returning the product lead the distributor to believe that the circuits had been outside the U.S. and it requested to inspect the facility where Cheerway manufactured its products. Tsu denied the requests.
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