FBI Ordeal Tested His Faith in U.S., Immigrant Says

Despite a nightmarish experience in which he was snared by the FBI, jailed for more than two months and stripped of his possessions, Jeffrey Jhyfang Lo still has faith in his adopted country. But his faith in its government has been sorely tested.

Lo, who runs an import-export business out of a cramped Cypress apartment, was found not guilty late last week of charges that he attempted to smuggle a high-tech camera to China, where it could have been used by the military.

A U.S. judge ruled that Lo, 52, was entrapped by FBI Agent John Zelinski into breaking the law, even after repeated attempts by Lo to convince the agent that he wanted to export the camera legally. Zelinski, a counterintelligence specialist in Chinese espionage who was working undercover, testified he was trying to recruit Lo to spy for the United States.

“I treated him like a good friend and business partner, and he treated me like a criminal,” said Lo. Still, he said, “I trusted the U.S. legal system from the first day, because I knew I was innocent. But this is the U.S. How can this happen here?”

Soon after his arrest at Los Angeles International Airport in February, the government seized his bank accounts, Lo said. For one excruciating week, his wife, Betty, had no money to buy food for their infant daughter, he said.

Defense attorney Richard M. Steingard persuaded the government to release the accounts while Lo remained locked up, held without bail. He was released on $65,000 bail more than two months later.

“My wife speaks very little English, and she doesn’t drive. She and the baby depend on me for everything. That’s why I have my office at home. While I was in jail, I called her two times a day to comfort her and see how the baby was,” Lo said.

Lo said his wife thought that he was on a jet bound for China when 15 FBI agents knocked on her door in the middle of the night, rousting her and the sleeping baby.

“They took everything. My computer, my blackboard, everything,” he said.

Since his acquittal, Lo said, only a few of his belongings have been returned. His attorney has filed a motion seeking to have the FBI return the rest of the property.

Lo’s case was the second setback of the FBI in the last three months involving Taiwanese American defendants suspected of providing military technology to China. Wen Ho Lee was freed in September after pleading guilty to a single felony count of illegally retaining national defense information, after the government dismissed 58 counts, most of which carried life sentences.

Critics charged that Lee was targeted by the FBI because he is Taiwanese, and Steingard believes that Lo, who is a U.S. citizen, also was targeted for prosecution because of his background.

Diane Chin, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based civil rights group, said the government “makes a huge illogical leap that Chinese Americans are more likely to engage in espionage on behalf of China.”

“They have this perception of us as foreigners who are disloyal. It’s a pattern. We learned from the Wen Ho Lee case that the FBI pursues these investigations on illogical premises,” Chin said.

“The FBI opened this investigation after they were contacted by Raytheon. Lo went to them about purchasing the camera, and they thought it was suspicious. That’s how this whole investigation started. He was never targeted,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

A motion filed by prosecutors Aug. 10 charged that Lo previously had tried to illegally export a restricted laser system, missile guidance gyroscopes and a sextant used in missile systems to China. The government alleged that Lo used a German company to illegally export products to China.

The government made the allegations as part of an unsuccessful move to persuade U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper to bar Lo’s use of an entrapment defense.

Zelinski did not respond to a request for comment. But FBI spokesman Luis Flores denied Lowas entrapped.