No charges were ever filed against Sirous Nourgostar of Iran or Xin Dai of China. There was never any suggestion that they did anything wrong.
But J. Reece Roth, now 72, a plasma physics specialist at the University of Tennessee, was sent to prison for allowing the two graduate students to see sensitive data while they helped him do research on plasma guidance for unmanned aircraft under an Air Force contract.
Roth was found guilty of 18 counts of conspiracy, fraud and violating the Arms Export Control Act. It was the first time the federal government had ever used the export act to crack down on the distribution of technical data, as opposed to actual hardware, to foreigners in a college.
Roth testified that he didn’t believe he violated the law because the research had not yet produced anything tangible. He said he received only $6,000 for the contract.
Trial testimony showed that Roth initially tried to confine the sensitive research to an American graduate student but that eventually it was shared.