Professor, Family Members Plead Guilty to Fraud
An electrical engineering professor at UCLA and three members of his family pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out a scheme to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent grants.
Cavour Yeh, 55, pleaded guilty to six counts of defrauding the federal government, the state of California and private foundations. His brother, Richard Yeh, 53, and sisters, Victoria Hsia, 58, and Wei Li, 56, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to conceal Cavour Yeh’s false statements to the government.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Nathan Hochman said the professor at the Westwood school hired his relatives to work on government grants, turned in bogus employment applications for them and received kickbacks from their salaries. UCLA paid Yeh and his relatives nearly $500,000 between 1981 and 1988 for work that was not done, Hochman said.
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