Climate Hustlers Go To Jail, Do Not Pass Go

From Climate Depot:  Professor, Wife Sentenced After Defrauding NASA

The duo told NASA that their startup company would develop a cutting-edge sensor used to track climate change. Instead, prosecutors alleged, they used the company to funnel money to themselves.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A university professor in Pennsylvania has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison on a conviction of defrauding NASA by letting graduate students and researchers do all the work on a $700,000 project.

U.S. District Court Judge Harvey Bartle III also ordered Yujie Ding on Wednesday to pay a fine of $3,000 and restitution of $72,000. His wife, Yuliya Zotova, was sentenced to three months in prison.

Authorities said the Lehigh University engineering professor and his wife told NASA that their startup company ArkLight would develop a cutting-edge sensor used to track climate change. Instead, prosecutors alleged, they used the company “as a front to funnel federal grant money to themselves for research performed by students and others.”

Jurors convicting the couple of six of 10 fraud counts.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a827b865066d491b8095605e6f5ee0ea/professor-wife-sentenced-convictions-defrauding-nasa

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According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, from August 2009 through July 2010, the pair submitted proposals to NASA seeking research funding by claiming that their business, ArkLight, was doing research and subcontracting work to Lehigh University where Ding was a professor.

Instead, an investigation found that the pair used ArkLight “as a front to funnel federal grant money to themselves for research performed by students and others working under Ding’s supervision at his university lab.”

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the defendants sent invoices to NASA for research that, a jury found, ArkLight had not participated in.

http://www.phillyvoice.com/lehigh-university-professor-wife-sentenced-scheme-defraud-nasa/

Here is the Federal Indictment: federal_indictment_ding_zotova (PDF)
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Note:  This story is unusual only in the respect we know about it.  There is much skullduggery in academia with fraudulent applications for grants seeking millions of Dollars for projects that may take a month to do and have equipment and material expenses that are fraudulent, being done in existing labs.  Many require travel to exotic places in time for the truffle harvest or other such events worthy of being documented in a book entitled "The Art of the Grant."  There are too many men and women in academia who care not what they do to eduation or the nation as long as they get rich, often very rich.

I grew up in academia as the son of two college professors, although my mother was not until after I left home, but she learned to be a classic "professor's wife" which is a destiny only a little less constraining than being a preacher's wife.

With as much Brie and Chablis spilled on my head as a rug in a faculty lounge, I learned how obsessed Ph.D.s are with money.  They think they are entitled to wealth just because they are smart.  It is just that simple, but no one is that smart.  They are simply people who love school enough to put up with 20 years of it and know how to kiss the right butts.  Most are not at all creative and would starve in a free market.

Adrian Vance