Report Validates Yet Another Clint Curtis Allegation!
Convicted Chinese Spy Was Illegal when Working for YEI as of 2000!
ALSO: Official Report Claims YEI 'Petitioned' I.N.S. on Nee's Behalf!
By Brad Friedman on 2/21/2005, 4:28pm PT  

Documents from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) recently obtained by The BRAD BLOG confirm yet another of Clint Curtis' stunning allegations against Oviedo software firm Yang Enteprises, Inc. and Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL).

The documents, released exclusively here, in full, by The BRAD BLOG, show that, according to Federal officials at the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, convicted spy and Chinese national, Hai Lin Nee (a/k/a Henry Nee) had been --- as Curtis alleged, first in 2001 and again in his sworn affidavit [PDF], --- an illegal alien during the period that Curtis worked with him at YEI.

According to the report --- published as part of a three-year investigation spurred by the charges of Curtis and another whistleblower at FDOT who first reported in 2001 on alleged wrong doing at YEI --- Nee's legal alien status in America had expired on December 31, 1999.

From the report...

On August 27, 2004, SA Curtis Johnson, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Office of Investigation, stated that Nee's legal alien status was good until December 31, 199. SA Johnson went on to say that as of January 1, 2000, Nee would have been out of legal status and would have been an illegal alien.
...
On October 26, 2004, SA Curtis confirmed the information he previously provided stating that Nee's legal alien status lasted until December 31, 1999, and as of January 1, 2000, Nee would have been an illegal alien.

The report also shows that YEI --- who has on several occassions denied that Nee was ever an employee, or even a consultant at YEI --- petioned the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on Nee's behalf to extend his visa sometime during 1999!

The report goes on to say, "That request was disapproved by INS based on a lack of information on the application for Nee submitted by YEI."

The BRAD BLOG has previously published records showing "Weekly Time Reports" from YEI which demonstrate that Nee did, in fact, work for YEI. The OIG's recent report, as well, further confirms that fact. (We will have more from the FDOT IG's recent report later this week as we finish studying the documents.)

During the period in which Nee was working for YEI, Feeney was their general counsel as well as their registered lobbyist. All that while he also served as the powerful Speaker of the Florida House at the same time. Feeney, who was a one-time running mate to Jeb Bush and currently sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee from Florida's 24th district, was charged, by Curtis, with having asked him to build a "vote-rigging software prototype" while Curtis was a YEI employee.

Previously, we had published a number of emails from several company employees, including Nee himself, indicating that Nee worked at the firm after 1999, when his legal alien status would have lapsed and when Feeney was working with YEI to help them procure large contracts with the state and others, including NASA.

One of those emails, from Mike Cohen, YEI CEO's executive secretary, indicates that he was aware that Nee was illegal (the misspellings are Cohen's):

From: "M C" |XXXXXXXX@hotmail.com|
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX@XXXX.XXX
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 15:47:46 -0400
Message-ID: |F145mS40m3DwZpu6ZY00000b1f9@hotmail.com|
...
Henri is ever still tryhing to become a non-illegal alien; you know, he dodn't probably have to pay tazes, and I do. I don't like that.

And on April 15th, 2001, the day after the above email from Cohen, Nee himself wrote to Curtis indicating his work at YEI where Curtis had recently resigned due to the alleged shenanigans at the company:

From: XXXXX@aol.com
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX@XXXX.XXX
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 22:50:33 EDT
Subject: (no subject)

Clint:

Long time no talk, how are you doing? How is the weather treating you?
Any progress on your job search?

Fernado keeps adding boxes to the alrerady very crowded PE screen, it is really killing us, may be you should come back and save us, ha ha ha.

Best regards,

Henry

Mike Cohen, discussed in a recent article here as having filed a potentially false police report against Curtis, was said to have been present along with YEI CEO, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang, during the October 2000 meeting at YEI when the vote-rigging software was alleged to have been discussed by Feeney.

It is not clear in the OIG's report why it took until August of 2004 to confirm Nee's illegal alien status since Curtis had reported him as illegal to several officials as long ago as early 2001.

There are indications in the report, however, that Federal Officials, for unexplained reasons, refused to supply information to the OIG on Nee's alien status until after Nee's federal indictment on three charges of espionage for having attempted to ship chips used in the Hellfilre anti-missile system to the People's Republic of China had been completed.

No explanation is given in the report for the delay from Federal Officials on releasing information about Nee's alien status, but it does go on to say that:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tylke confirmed that she had instructed SA [Special Agent] Oliver from ICE not to release any information regarding Nee's alien status.

Nee's indictment was the result of a four-year federal sting operation by ICE who, in describing the arrest on their website (Ed Note: Page was archived off of the ICE site, here is a version of the page we saved before it was removed), had explained that each of the three charges was punishable by "up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines."

The plea agreement eventually struck, in July of 2004 between Nee and the Feds on Count Three of the indictment, quotes him as having said, "that business has been slow in the last year and that he had only sent parts out of the country ten to twenty times..." [emphasis added]

It also specified that the one count on which Nee was pleading guilty "carrie[d] a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, a term of supervised release of not more than 3 years, and a special assessment of $100 per felony count thereafter."

However, as first reported exclusively by The BRAD BLOG last December, Nee was eventually sentenced in October of 2004 to a total of just three years probation and a $100 fine.

Nee still resides near YEI in Oviedo, FL.

Curtis' allegations about Nee were just one of many made by the software programmer about improprieties at YEI. The startling allegation that Feeney had asked Curtis to create the "vote-rigging software prototype" while at YEI continues to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill.

Both Feeney, Cohen and YEI's attorneys have denied those allegations, but then again they've denied a number of related allegations as well. Many of those denials, however, have already been proven false by continued reporting on this matter since December at The BRAD BLOG and elswhere.

To date, none of Curtis' allegations have been in any way proven to be untrue. And, in fact, many of them --- including this latest information showing that Nee was an illegal alien, as Curtis charged long ago --- have, in fact, proven to be completely accurate.

The BRAD BLOG will, of course, continue to report on this explosive developing scandal...

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Article Categories: Tom Feeney, Clint Curtis