The Scientist and the Spy

by Mara Hvistendahl

  At the previous year’s Seed Expo, Robert had formally offered Kevin the consulting job. So much had changed since then. Now Kevin was an FBI informant, Robert was suspicious of everyone, and an unspoken tension lay between them.

  Kevin was sick of being strung along as the foreign face in an illegal operation. DBN had thrust into jeopardy his relationships with contacts in the seed industry. He’d had to inform the people who provided seed for the Monee plot that all of their efforts to provide hybrids had come to nothing. “My contact is the CEO’s brother-in-law,” he said, by way of explanation. “He doesn’t have a background in agriculture.” Most people were understanding. Everyone knew of poorly managed seed companies. Nonetheless, it was Kevin’s reputation that was on the line. He couldn’t explain that the man who hired him was under investigation by the FBI.

  Robert started their meeting by telling Kevin that he was disappointed that the agronomist hadn’t managed to send any hybrids to South America. Kevin countered that despite asking on multiple occasions, he hadn’t been given a contact in China, a budget, or a timeline. And why was another breeder brought in without his knowledge?

  Robert shrugged off Kevin’s questions, for once passing up the opportunity to talk. He seemed to be avoiding eye contact. If he wanted Kevin to continue working for DBN, Kevin thought, he wasn’t trying very hard. He didn’t know that Robert had his own grievances—that he, too, wanted to distance himself from the more questionable aspects of DBN’s work.

  Despite his frustration, Kevin could see reasons not to quit. His handler wanted him to keep feeding the FBI information. And the investigation hadn’t stopped him from hoping that the work he was doing for DBN might translate into projects for other Chinese seed companies. He had begun supplementing his studies of fortune cookie phrases with a Mandarin-language guide he found at a discount bookstore. After everything, he still dreamed of one day retracing his father’s footsteps in Shanghai.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER MEETING ROBERT at the Seed Expo, Kevin decided to stay on at DBN, but under one unspoken condition: He would make the relationship work for him. When spring arrived in Illinois, he planted his hybrids in the small plot in Monee, which by then looked entirely abandoned. Robert had stopped replying to his emails, but Kevin decided that he might as well use the land. If he continued to cultivate the hybrids, he figured, he might be able to provide them to other clients.

  DBN’s ambitious renovation plans for the farm appeared to have been scrapped. Not long after he finished planting, drought hit the area, sucking the water out of the soil and turning it to dust. Fissures spliced through the earth, mirroring the cracks in the farmhouse from the break-in the summer before. As the growing season wore on, Kevin saw no hint of visitors. Even vandals left the place alone.

  The FBI believed that if DBN managed to obtain both Monsanto and Pioneer seed, its scientists wouldn’t need to stop at simply re-creating existing American products. They could combine the best inbreds in the world to create new super seeds—products that were better than the sum of their parts. But Kevin knew that more established U.S. companies had legally swapped inbreds with that aim and had failed to produce interesting new hybrids. Typically, it took years of experimentation to arrive at the best pair of parent seeds. The FBI’s fear assumed a level of sophistication that, in Kevin’s view, DBN’s scientists lacked.

  At times his mind went to the Keystone Kops, the group of incompetent policemen made famous by early silent films. Where the FBI saw an elaborate effort to steal intellectual property and threaten national security, Kevin saw a collection of inept criminals bumbling around cornfields. He wanted to rant about it to someone who understood, like another breeder. But he still couldn’t say anything about the investigation.

  It wasn’t just that there was a much better way to reverse engineer corn. It was the fact that Robert and his colleagues had spent untold amounts of money trying to obtain a few top-notch seeds. Dr. Li had aimed for one hundred varieties of corn, but in reality DBN probably got far fewer than that. Corn breeding was an industry in which companies were expected to constantly improve on their varieties. If DBN’s executives had instead directed all that effort into improving their breeding program, Kevin believed, the company might actually thrive long term, perhaps even to the point where it ended up on the other side of the trade secrets battleground: with intellectual property of its own to protect.

  Kevin’s concerns raised an important issue: Even if a company manages to steal a technology, a few years later the technology is obsolete. To keep up, it either has to learn from the theft or steal again.

  He approached the question as a scientist primarily interested in research outcomes, though. There were other factors that mattered. While intellectual property theft was not a viable long-term strategy, when combined with central government policies that gave domestic companies an edge in the Chinese market, it could boost sales long enough for a company to gain a significant foothold in the market. Obtaining a handful of superior inbreds might give DBN a short-term advantage and perhaps a few years of healthy profits. And if those few years coincided with a concerted Chinese government effort to support domestic agricultural technology, DBN might edge out Monsanto and Pioneer, at least in China. From there the company could move on to other markets where farmers were eager for lower-priced alternatives to Western seeds, like developing countries in Africa and other parts of Asia.

  The plan that to Kevin seemed so foolish could actually work, at least in the short run. But with many of the stolen seeds already overseas, it wasn’t at all clear that a few FBI arrests could stop the operation—let alone solve the larger problem of intellectual property theft.

  TWENTY-SIX

  WINTER 2013–2014

  At 6:00 A.M. on December 11, a squad of agents in bulletproof vests encircled Robert Mo’s house in Boca Raton, their boots cutting into the vibrant lawn. As neighbors in the cul-de-sac rose to make coffee and let the dogs out, they cracked open curtains and rolled up blinds, puzzling over the commotion at the Chinese scientist’s home.

  Mark Betten was elsewhere that day, but he’d helped arrange the arrest date with the FBI’s Miami field office. The bureau was preparing to apprehend another Chinese national in an unrelated agricultural espionage case in Kansas, and bureau leaders had decided to coordinate the arrests for the same day so that neither suspect would spook and flee. Mark might have wanted to arrest six men on an airtight indictment, with the identities of the seized seeds clear and a direct link to Beijing established. But he had to make do with apprehending one—the man who had sparked the whole investigation when he showed up near a field where he didn’t belong.

  “FBI!” the agents shouted, banging on the front door. Robert’s wife, Carolyn, got there first; he was close behind her, half clothed. A stream of agents rushed inside, past a Christmas tree decorated in anticipation of the upcoming holiday. They placed Robert under arrest, handcuffed him, and marched him outside to a government vehicle.

  Back in the house, the FBI was just getting started. Investigators ransacked the place, collecting anything that might be evidence—laptops, flash drives, external hard drives, a portable GPS navigator. More than twenty devices in total. They seized tax records and other financial documents, and a collection of assorted scientific papers, including a folder that contained inexplicable clippings about Sasquatch sightings. The ruckus roused Robert and Carolyn’s two children, who watched with their mother, confused, as a sketch artist pulled out a pad and drew the layout of the house.

  The arrest set off a flurry of activity across the country. Agents from the FBI’s Miami field office searched DBN’s office in Boca Raton, seizing the sign-in log, property tax receipts, and several computers and hard drives. Across the Midwest, the FBI descended on people with any connection to the case. In Johnston, Iowa, agents dropped in at the homes of ethnic Chinese breeders working for Pioneer
who were suspected of being insiders. To the southwest in Adel, they rolled open the door on DBN’s storage locker, cataloging the bags of seed and stray corncobs that the men had left behind.

  Outside Chicago, agents pulled in next to a vasectomy clinic and searched the mortgage brokerage headed by Michael Yao, seizing eleven hard drives.

  Back in Florida, Robert rode north in the government car. At Gun Club Road, the car turned right, onto a small lane. On the other side of a barbed-wire fence was the gaudy Trump International Golf Club, which carried a $250,000 initiation fee. The club had just taken on a new importance with the news that Donald Trump was toying with a run for president. But Robert would not be golfing. The car came to a stop at the Palm Beach County Main Detention Center. After years of work by dozens of agents in five states building a case against him, Robert Mo was in U.S. government custody.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WINTER 2013–2014

  Robert looked up at the jail, a nine-story monstrosity with tiny slits for windows. More than fifteen hundred inmates were housed inside. He was only twenty minutes from his house, but he felt light-years away.

  It was 4:30 P.M. on the day of his arrest. In his account, he hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. When he awakened that morning to loud knocks, he briefly wondered if he was dreaming. Then, after the shock of the arrest, there was the wrangling over inane details with agents while sitting in the government car. No, he couldn’t put on proper clothes; a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and slippers were sufficient for where he was headed. No, the agents couldn’t explain the charges against him. Yes, he could be escorted back into his house to get his hypertension pills.

  The scene he would never forget came when he returned to the house for his medication: his son and daughter, sitting mutely on the sofa in their pajamas, a blanket over their laps. The sight of Robert in handcuffs prompted his son to throw the blanket over his head. His daughter just stared at him in disbelief.

  He fetched his meds in shame, then turned to his children. “Don’t be scared!” Robert entreated as the agents yanked him out of the house. “Always trust your dad, as I always trust you.”

  In jail, the memory haunted him. His stomach churned. Finally, someone brought him a meager sandwich—a single slice each of meat and cheese between thin slices of bread. Processing took hours. At around 11:00 P.M., the lawyer Carolyn had called showed up. Valentin Rodriguez looked like he hawked used cars rather than defended accused criminals. His website, www.defenderforme.com, featured a gigantic image of his face photoshopped in front of a courthouse. But they needed to act fast, and Rodriguez happened to be available when Carolyn called.

  A few months earlier, when Robert saw the photos of Shao Genhuo meeting with Xi Jinping at the Zhongguancun innovation center, he had grown nervous. The more famous you are, the more trouble it brings, he warned Dr. Li. Now his fears were borne out. DBN’s fame had brought trouble—for Robert, at least.

  Just before midnight Robert was given his prison uniform—a thin scrubslike pants and shirt. As he slipped the clothes on, the fabric brushed past the lump in his groin. A doctor he had seen on a recent stint in Beijing had recommended removing it, but another medical professional thought the lump was merely a hernia. He had intended to consult a third expert on his planned trip to China. That medical visit, like all of his other plans, had been foiled.

  Many of the other men in the jail had committed drug offenses. A few men were in for murder. The conditions in which inmates were held varied wildly. A few years earlier, millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had been given a private wing of the jail after striking a deal with the U.S. attorney’s office. In Robert’s account, he was shoved into a cell that housed around twenty inmates. That night, he shifted about, shivering, as the air-conditioning blasted through a vent. He tried to sleep, but the image of his son hiding under the blanket looped on repeat in his head.

  Four days later, Robert was charged with conspiracy to steal trade secrets under the Economic Espionage Act. A complaint filed by Mark Betten laid bare the FBI’s extensive bugging and GPS tracking of rental cars used by DBN employees as they drove around the Midwest. Mark listed the fields that Lin Yong and Ye Jian had visited on their trips through corn country, quoting liberally from their conversation about how they were engaged in a criminal offense. The complaint also covered Robert’s early run-in with Polk County sheriff’s deputies in Bondurant, Iowa; his visits to FedEx facilities in Illinois and Iowa; and the storage spaces that the men had used to stow corn. Even his appearance at a World Food Prize event, wearing another man’s name tag, was mentioned.

  Robert faced a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine. For the U.S. government, this was not the preferred offense. Jason Griess had been hoping to show that Robert had acted at the behest of the Chinese government—a charge that would have meant a maximum of fifteen years in prison and a $500,000 fine. But for Robert it was unthinkable. Ten years meant missing his daughter’s high school and college educations, his son’s adolescence. Because he was not a U.S. citizen, a felony conviction would also mean the end of his life in America. Upon serving out a prison term, he would be deported, sent back to China in disgrace. The indictment also charged other DBN employees, including Ye Jian, Lin Yong, and Dr. Li. But all of them were in China, which had no extradition treaty with the United States. They were unlikely to ever spend time behind bars. Only Robert faced any real prospect of time in federal prison.

  A judge deemed Robert a flight risk, denying his request to be released on bail. A few weeks after his arrest, guards shackled his hands and feet, chained him to another inmate, and shuttled him aboard a plane to Atlanta operated by “Con Air”—the nickname for the fleet of rickety jets operated by the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System. From Atlanta he took a second plane to Oklahoma City, where he stayed for three days in a county jail. He continued by bus to a private jail in Kansas City, Missouri, spending a week there before finally moving on by van to Des Moines, where he would face trial. When transporting inmates in federal custody, he learned, speed is not a priority.

  Other prisoners informed him that the grueling cross-country trips were called the diesel treatment. Chained to another inmate, hot and hungry and needing to pee, Robert thought back to the time he had spent sourcing animal feed for DBN, before all the drama started. A pig transportation expert had told him that it was good practice to keep crated pigs in lower temperatures. They were less likely to get sick and die that way. Now he understood firsthand what the expert had meant.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  WINTER 2013–2014

  The day after Robert Mo’s arrest, The Des Moines Register and USA Today carried the news. From there it hit The Wall Street Journal and the Chinese press. Most of the American coverage centered on one image: a man in a suit in a cornfield with fully grown corn. In Iowa, meanwhile, commentators had a more immediate concern: that the arrest of Robert Mo could jeopardize the state’s lucrative relationship with China.

  Xi Jinping’s visit to the World Food Prize Hall the year before had cemented Iowa’s dependence on Chinese agricultural imports. In the wake of Xi’s sojourn, officials in Hebei province had announced plans to construct what they called the China-U.S. Friendship Farm—a full replica of the farm that the Chinese leader had visited in Maxwell, Iowa. At a ceremony held just two months before Robert’s arrest, Iowa companies signed twenty cooperative trade agreements with Chinese counterparts, covering some $1 billion worth of goods.

  Now Governor Terry Branstad was confronted by the fact that as he shook hands with Chinese dignitaries the year before, an accused criminal had watched from the audience. In his weekly news conference, journalists questioned Branstad about Robert’s arrest. “I believe it may present some additional challenges in terms of our relationship, but this is a particular incident,” he said. “I don’t think this should prevent us from continuing to work together.”r />
  In fact, the same day that Robert was arrested, the FBI apprehended a second Chinese agricultural researcher in an unconnected case in Kansas. Weiqiang Zhang was a rice breeder with the biopharmaceutical company Ventria Bioscience, which uses rice seeds to develop specialized medicines. Zhang was accused of filching hundreds of these souped-up seeds from his employer, stashing them in his freezer and his bedroom closet, and passing them off to a delegation of visiting Chinese crop scientists. His case bore enough similarities to Robert’s—the visiting agricultural delegation, the seeds stashed in luggage—for the FBI to suggest that agricultural espionage was, to use the bureau’s phrasing, a growing threat.

  Kevin was at the America Seed Trade Association’s annual meeting in Chicago when his FBI handler called him to inform him that Robert was in custody. Two years earlier, Robert had formally hired him at the conference. The year before, he had met Robert there for a tense discussion about DBN’s seed-breeding plans. This year, he learned that his strange stint as an FBI informant was over. He was happy to no longer be carrying secrets, whether for DBN or the FBI.

  After he arrived home, Kevin opened Facebook to unburden himself. “This may be the strangest post you will ever see on my wall,” he began. Linking to an article on Robert’s arrest, he went on to detail the events of the previous two years:

  I was interviewed by the FBI on 5 occasions. The fact that you are reading this now means that I had NOTHING to do with this. My suspicions started prior to my 1st of 5 interviews with the FBI; the kinds of questions Robert Mo asked were indicative of how little he understood and every request from me for agronomic information was ignored. Robert seemed to have no grasp of the experimental requirements, equipment needed and time to conduct legitimate plant breeding research.