FBI set up Huawei sting operation at burger joint during CES

A U.S.-based startup and the FBI worked together on a sting operation focused on Huawei at a burger joint in Las Vegas during CES last month.

According to a February 4th Bloomberg report, in 2017 the Chinese telecommunications giant ordered a few samples of U.S. startup Akhan Semiconductor’s “Miraj Diamond Glass.” Akhan’s founder Adam Khan suspected Huawei of intellectual property theft when the products were returned badly damaged.

The FBI ended up recruiting Khan and the company’s chief operating officer Carl Shurboff to take part in its investigations of Huawei.

The report said emails and text communications between Akhan and Huawei were forwarded to the FBI and a phone call between the Huawei executive, Khan and Shurboff was tapped.

The final step in the operation was the Vegas sting. During the operation, the Huawei executive and another senior official were present while Khan and Shurboff were allegedly taping the entire meeting.

The report said during the meeting Huawei denied violating U.S. export laws and also “claimed ignorance” when it came to Khan’s damaged products. According to Bloomberg’s report though, the FBI said there were no grounds for indictment and as such, there is no information about what will happen further with this investigation.

This information comes at a time when the Shenzhen-based company is facing 13 counts of wire and bank fraud. The U.S. Department of Justice charged the company, its global CFO Meng Wanzhou, and its subsidiary Skycom.

Huawei was also indicted for stealing smartphone testing technology from T-Mobile.

Vancouver authorities arrested Meng on December 1st, 2018 and she currently faces extradition to the U.S.

In Canada, Huawei works with Bell and Telus to deploy its 5G technology in the future.

Source: Bloomberg Via: Engadget