District Attorney for Los Angeles County George Gascn, seen here in 2020, said that his office had assisted in the CEO of an election software company based in Michigan being detained on “suspicion of theft of personal identifying information.” hidden caption Bryan Chan/AP
switch to caption Bryan Chan/AP
District Attorney for Los Angeles County George Gascn, seen here in 2020, said that his office had assisted in the CEO of an election software company based in Michigan being detained on “suspicion of theft of personal identifying information.”
Bryan Chan for AP The CEO of a tiny company that creates software for scheduling poll workers and has a contract with L.A. County, Eugene Yu, was arrested on Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney announced . At a press conference, district attorney George Gascn stated that the company, Konnech, was obligated by the county’s contract to retain election worker data securely on American servers.
According to Gascn, his office “discovered probable grounds to think that Konnech allegedly violated this contract by storing critical information that the workers gave on servers in China,” during the course of a separate inquiry.
The District Attorney withheld additional information regarding the evidence his detectives had so far found. On “suspicion of theft of personal identifying information,” he claimed, Yu was arrested.
Michigan-based Konnech was arrested, according to Gascn, whose office worked with regional law police to do so. Investigators from the Public Integrity Unit and the Computer Forensics Unit assisted in serving the arrest warrant on Yu, according to Robert Arcos, the director of the D.A.’s Bureau of Investigation. They also helped collect hard drives.
Gascn stated, “We aim to hold all those liable for this violation, ” and noted that his office is requesting Yu’s extradition from Michigan to California.
Democrat Gascn claimed that the data purportedly stored on Chinese servers connected to poll workers and was unrelated to voter or election-related information.
“We are continuing to ascertain the details of what we believe to be Mr. Yu’s unlawful arrest by L.A. County officials,” a Konnech spokeswoman said in a statement.
According to the spokesperson, Jon Goldberg, “Any L.A. County poll worker data that Konnech may have had was provided to it by L.A. County, and so could not have been “stolen” as stated.”
Earlier this month, Konnech asserted that Yu and the business were the targets of a “smear campaign” run by “conspiracy theorists,” who claimed Konnech was in possession of Chinese data. The business claimed that the accusations damaged its prospects for growth as a small company with fewer than 30 North American clients and led to threats of death against the CEO.
The business published a “2022 Election Mis-information Advisory” on their website, noting that Konnect has never kept client data on servers located in China, according to stated . In remarks to NPR and other news outlets outlets, Goldberg reaffirmed this assertion.
However, as of Tuesday, that assertion was no longer accessible from the company’s home page. There seemed to be a problem with the “Advisory” link. When NPR questioned Goldberg about the ostensible modification to the website, he remained silent.
The business also launched legal action against the contentious nonprofit True the Vote, which claimed to have discovered Konnech data on Chinese servers and claimed Konnech was a part of “a red Chinese communist op operated against the United States.”
The election denial movie “2,000 Mules,” which has been thoroughly refuted by fact-checkers and opponents from all sides of the political spectrum, including former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, was executive produced by True the Vote.
In the lawsuit , Konnech asserted once more that the business “does not, and has never, stored any actual customer or poll worker data on any server in China,” and she succeeded in getting a temporary restraining order ( order ) against True the Vote from a federal judge. True the Vote was forbidden from “using, exposing, or exploiting the property and data obtained from Konnech’s protected systems” according to that order. Later, Konnech asked a judge to hold True the Vote in contempt for allegedly disobeying the ruling.
The Vote did indeed deny all fault in the libel action. The creator of Factual the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, declared on the day the case was filed that “everything we have ever claimed about any of this is true.”
Before the FBI ultimately “betrayed us,” the group had earlier stated that it was working cooperatively with the Federal Bureau of Inquiry on an investigation against Konnech. For its part, Konnech has previously asserted that company was collaborating with law authorities.
In any case, when announcing Yu’s arrest, the L.A. County D.A. made no mention of the FBI or any other federal law enforcement agencies.
True the Vote claimed in an statement that the organisation was “I feel privileged to have had even a little part in what must have been a thorough and intricate study. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office’s comprehensive investigation and prompt response in this situation are much appreciated by the organization.”
As for True the Vote’s repeated admissions of their unlawful behavior toward Konnech, Goldberg stated that Konnech “stands behind its comprehensive pleadings with the Federal Court.”
