Temple Professor Gets Help With Legal Fees
By Kristen Johanson
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Temple physics professor Xiaoxing Xi was charged with espionage last spring.
The Federal government withdrew charges, and have announced that they won't be refiling charges, but the professor now has hefty legal fees to pay.
Federal agents swarmed Professor Xiaoxing Xi's house last May, seizing computers and other property and then charged him with wire fraud.
Xi's lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg says it was all a gross misunderstanding of emails Xi sent to the Chinese government.
"They misinterpreted what was being discussed in the emails," says Zeidenberg.
He says even though the government withdrew charges, Xi's life has been turned upside down.
Now, Xi has to pay more than $220,000 in legal fees for a crime he says he didn't commit. That's where his fellow Temple University colleagues come in.
"That's tremendous amount of money for him and his family. So I try to help him by setting up this legal defense fund to pay the legal fees to give him some relief," said fellow professor Rongjia Tao.