WVU FRAUD CASE
Former professor sentenced for defrauding university.
Former West Virginia University professor Qingyun Sun was sentenced Friday to three years of probation, the first four months on home confinement, for defrauding WVU in a travel reimbursement scheme for a trip to China and for filing a false tax return in connection with travel.
Sun, 58, of Morgantown, W.Va., had pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Clarksburg in July to counts of wire fraud and filing a false return following an investigation by the FBI and IRS.
WVU cooperated in the investigation.
A Chinese national, Sun was an associate professor and the associate director of the U.S.-China Energy Center at WVU. He also acted as the governor’s assistant for China affairs through the WVU development office.
In addition, he was employed by Synfuels Americas Corp., an energy conversion company that provides the technology to convert coal and natural gas to liquid. The firm has an operation in Sterling, Va., but is headquartered in Beijing.
From July 2011 to May 2015, Peabody Energy Generation Holding Co. in St. Louis paid consulting fees to Energy United LLC, a consulting business Sun created in 2005.
The scheme involved Sun’s operation of the consulting business through Energy United.
In 2015, Sun traveled to China to prepare for an upcoming visit to China of WVU representatives and to lead a West Virginia industrial delegation for a coal expo in Beijing, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Northern West Virginia.
Sun booked both a coach flight and a business-class flight for the trip. He submitted a request for reimbursement to WVU for the coach flight and another to Synfuels for the business flight, but he only used the business-class ticket.
In 2014, Sun filed a joint tax return with his wife that grossly overstated his business-related travel expenses, prosecutors said, when the vast majority of the expenses were paid for with a WVU purchasing card or reimbursed to him by WVU and Peabody Energy.
He also failed to state any financial interest or authority over a financial account in a foreign country while maintaining an interest in numerous financial accounts in China, prosecutors said.