California Man Sentenced to Prison for Illegally Shipping Chips to China
Yi-Chi Shih, a Hollywood Hills, California, resident, was sentenced to over five years in prison for his role in a scheme to illegally ship integrated circuits with military applications to China, the Department of Justice said July 22. Shih was convicted of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Administration Regulations and fined more than $600,000 in fines and restitution to the IRS (see 1907020071).
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Shih was the president of Chengdu GaStone Technology Company, a Chinese company that was building a facility to produce high-powered semiconductor chips and was placed on the Commerce Department's Entity List in 2014. Shih posed as a U.S. customer who would use the chips only in the U.S. and hid his "true intent" to export them to China, DOJ said. DOJ said Shih used his Hollywood Hills-based company, Pullman Lane Productions, to channel funds given by Chinese entities to purchase the semiconductors from the U.S. company. The advanced chips, or monolithic microwave integrated circuits, were designed for use in missiles, fighter jets and radar.