Federal agents seized electronic devices owned by a former IU professor and cybersecurity expert in connection with an investigation into suspected research funding fraud, newly unsealed records confirm.
IU fired tenured professor XiaoFeng Wang in late March, the same day U.S. agents raided properties in Bloomington and the Indianapolis area.
Read more: Wang accused of research misconduct before raids
A federal judge in Indianapolis unsealed the files in response to a motion by Stanford University policy researcher Riana Pfefferkorn.
The unsealed records show that the agents searching Wang's homes were looking for funding applications, including drafts, and submissions to the National Science Foundation. An inventory of 42 seized items lists phones, computers and hard drives as well as passports and plane tickets.
As pretext for pursuing the search warrant, federal officials wrote that they were pursuing evidence of fraud relating to federal program funding, wire fraud, and making false statements to a government official. Some elements of the case, including an affidavit, remain under seal.
But Pfefferkorn said the unsealed files, which include an inventory of items taken from Wang's homes, offer clues to the nature of the investigation.
“Just looking at it, it kind of supports some of the same theories about whether this is linked to some sort of Chinese program funding,” Pfefferkorn said Sunday in an interview. "The thing that I think is weird, though, looking at that investigation, is that even if it's about his alleged failure to disclose some sort of Chinese university funding or whatever it was, it still doesn't explain why they fired his wife," she said.
IU fired Wang as well as his wife, a library staff member, without explanation and removed their names from university websites in March.
According to communications last spring between Wang and IU administrators, obtained by WFIU/WTIU News, Wang had been placed on leave while the university investigated an accusation that he had mislabeled the principal investigator for a grant and failed to disclose co-authors.
Later in March, on the day of the raids on his properties, the university terminated his employment.
Pfefferkorn said that she hoped the listed criminal allegations tamp down on speculation the investigation is related to national security.
“ Hopefully it helps professor Wang be able to say, ‘Look, at least so far, nobody's accusing me of being a spy, right?’ Nobody's accusing me of being a national security threat,'" Pfefferkorn said, reiterating that the former professor hasn't been publicly accused of any crime.
Wang's attorney didn’t immediately return a message Sunday.
Cathy Knapp and Ethan Sandweiss contributed reporting.
