Yunhai Li, 35, was nabbed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston
...a city in Texas, named after Sam Houston, who would drop deader than he is now if he could see how it turned out...on July 9 after border patrol discovered the sensitive confidential medical records on his laptop during an inspection ahead of his flight to China, the Harris County District Attorney's Office announced Monday.
The Chinese national, who was employed as a researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center since 2022, was reportedly working on a vaccine to prevent breast cancer from spreading before abruptly quitting on July 1 and uploading the nearly-completed research to a Chinese server on his computer.
''Houston is proudly home to some of the most groundbreaking medical institutions in the world — publicly funded centers that are saving lives each day thanks to their innovative research,'' District Attorney Sean Terre said in a statement.
''We have zero tolerance for any attempts that hurt our nation and our community's ability to pioneer critical medical breakthroughs.''
Prosecutors said Li uploaded his research to his personal Google Drive while employed at the cancer center, and when caught by the institution, deleted the files and proved he had done so.
But Li — whose potentially life-changing work was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense — was also being paid by Chinese entities and had shared his files to a similar drive on a Chinese server called Baidu, court documents showed, Fox 26 reported.
Court records show he was secretly conducting research for Chongqing Medical University while employed and in the US on a non-immigrant scholar exchange visa — and never disclosed the conflict of interest despite signing a non-disclosure form that he had no foreign research ties or funding.