Arrested in Malpensa on a US warrant: for the FBI he is the hacker of a team of spies on anti-Covid vaccines

A 33-year-old Chinese man was arrested on July 3 at Malpensa airport, where he had just arrived, in execution of a warrant from the US authorities in an FBI investigation because he was accused, from what has been learned, of being part of a team of hackers that allegedly carried out espionage operations, in particular in 2020 on anti-Covid vaccines being produced at the University of Texas.

The man, defended by lawyer Enrico Giarda, is scheduled for tomorrow at the Court of Appeal in Milan in the proceedings on the US extradition request. For his family, the 33-year-old is merely a technician for an IT company.

As reported by his wife, Xu Zewei, 33, a resident of Shanghai, is a technician for an IT company and had arrived in Italy for a holiday. On July 4, Judge Veronica Tallarida of the Fifth Criminal Appeal Court of Milan validated the arrest and issued a precautionary detention in prison (he is now detained in Busto Arsizio, province of Varese), after the US order had been executed the day before, around 11 am, by the Police in Malpensa. The 33-year-old was wanted internationally on an arrest warrant issued on November 2, 2023, by the Southern District of Texas of the US District Court. He is accused by the United States, as stated in the documents, of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft (maximum sentence of 5 years), criminal conspiracy to commit wire fraud (maximum sentence of 20 years), unauthorized access to protected computers (maximum sentence of 5 years) and aggravated identity theft (maximum sentence of 2 years). As the Milan judge who ordered his detention wrote, “the Ministry of the Interior has communicated that the US authorities have issued the order” based on an FBI investigation which “revealed that Xu Zewei took part, together with other fellow Chinese citizens” in a “criminal conspiracy aimed at stealing information through unauthorized access to computers, including those of various universities and scientific research centers, located in the United States and elsewhere”. And according to the FBI, he would have acted in this “computer intrusion activity on behalf of authorities belonging to the Chinese government”. The 33-year-old’s phone was also seized to find “useful data for ascertaining the facts”. For the judge, there is a “concrete risk of escape”, given that the man “had just arrived in Italy” on a flight from Shanghai and “does not appear to have any roots in Italy”. The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow morning only for “personal identification and possible consent to extradition”. Then, the procedure will continue and could last several weeks. (ANSA).