Tenured professor faces charges in $16 million National Institutes of Health fraud

June 28 (UPI) -- The Department of Justice said Friday that a Maryland grand jury indictment against Professor Hoau-Yan Wang alleges he defrauded the U.S. National Institutes of Health of approximately $16 million.

A Justice Department statement said Wang was a tenured professor at a public university and also served as a aid adviser and consultant for a publicly traded Texas biopharmaceutical company.

"From approximately May 2015 through approximately April 2023, Wang allegedly engaged in a scheme to fabricate and falsify scientific data in grant applications made to the NIH on behalf of himself and the biopharmaceutical company," the DOJ said in a statement.

According to the DOJ fraudulent grant applications using the false data sought funding from the NIH.

The funding requests purported to be for "a potential treatment and diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease and resulted in the award of approximately $16 million in grants from approximately 2017 to 2021, part of which funded Wang's laboratory work and salary. "

Wang faces one count of major fraud against the United States, two counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements. The penalties if convicted are 10 years for the major fraud, 20 years per count for wire fraud and five years for making false statements.

"Wang's alleged scientific data falsification in the NIH grant applications related to how the proposed drug and diagnostic test were intended to work and the improvement of certain indicators associated with Alzheimer's disease after treatment with the proposed drug," the DOJ said.