Weiqiang Zhang, Theft of Engineered Rice, Kansas 2023

Weiqiang Zhang, a 50-year-old Chinese national residing in Manhattan, Kansas, has been convicted in a high-profile theft of engineered rice case.

A federal jury returned guilty verdicts against Zhang on one count of conspiracy to steal trade secrets, one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and one count of interstate transportation of stolen property.

Zhang worked as a rice breeder for Ventria Bioscience in Junction City, Kansas, developing genetically programmed rice to express recombinant human proteins for use in therapeutic and medical fields.

According to trial evidence, Zhang acquired hundreds of rice seeds produced by Ventria without authorization and stored them at his residence in Manhattan. The rice seeds, developed to express human serum albumin or lactoferrin, have a wide variety of health research applications.

The evidence also showed that in the summer of 2013, Zhang drove visitors from a crop research institute in China on a tour of facilities in Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio. On Aug. 7, 2013, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers found Ventria seeds in the luggage of Zhang’s visitors as they prepared to leave the United States for China.

The FBI’s Little Rock, Arkansas, Field Office and Kansas City, Missouri, Field Office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas investigated the case. Trial Attorney Matt Walczewski of the National Security Division, Trial Attorneys Brian Resler and Evan Williams of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Rask of the District of Kansas prosecuted the case.

Acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall of the District of Kansas, Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary B. McCord of the Justice Department’s National Security Division announced the conviction.

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