33-year-old Chinese arrested at Malpensa for computer espionage on US warrant
A 33-year-old Chinese man was arrested in Malpensa for computer espionage on anti-Covid vaccines. Extradition hearing set in Milan.
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A 33-year-old Chinese man was arrested on 3 July at Malpensa Airport, where he had just arrived, in execution of a warrant issued by the US authorities in an FBI investigation because he was allegedly part of a hacker team that carried out espionage operations, particularly in 2020 on anti-Covid vaccines being produced at the University of Texas.
For the man, defended by lawyer Enrico Giarda, a hearing is set for tomorrow in the Court of Appeal in Milan in the proceedings on the US extradition request. For his family, the 33-year-old is a mere technician in an IT company.
As reported by his wife, Xu Zewei, 33, resident in Shanghai, is a technician in an IT company and had arrived in Italy for a holiday period.
On 4 July, Judge Veronica Tallarida of the Fifth Criminal Court of Appeal in Milan validated the arrest and issued a pre-trial detention order in prison (he is now being held in Busto Arsizio, in the province of Varese), after the US order had been executed the day before, at around 11 a.m., by the police in Malpensa.
The 33-year-old was wanted internationally on an arrest warrant issued on 2 November 2023 by the Southern District of Texas District Court of the USA. He is charged by the US with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft (maximum sentence 5 years), conspiracy to commit wire fraud (maximum sentence 20 years), unauthorised access to protected computers (maximum sentence 5 years) and aggravated identity theft (maximum sentence 2 years).
