Eugene Yu, the CEO of Michigan-based election software company Konnech, was criminally charged for allegedly storing Los Angeles election worker data on Chinese servers.

Los Angeles County prosecutor Eric Neff alleges that the amount of data involved in the breach was “astounding,” adding that “this is probably the largest data breach in United States history.”

The prosecutor’s complaint reads:

“Based on evidence recovered from a search warrant executed October 4, 2022, the District Attorney’s Office discovered that Konnech employees known and unknown sent personal identifying information of Los Angeles County election workers to third-party software developers who assisted with creating and fixing Konnech’s internal ‘PollChief’ software.”

The complaint claims that Luis Nabergoi, a Konnech project manager overseeing the Los Angeles contract, wrote in a Chinese-owned messaging app that “any employee for Chinese contractors working on PollChief software had ‘superadministration’ privileges for all PollChief clients.”

Sam Faddis, retired CIA operations officer and renowned national security author, wrote in his Substack:

“An individual with super administration access to a system can do effectively anything inside that system. He or she can delete data, steal data, alter data, change programming, etc.

Perhaps most importantly, that individual can cover his or her tracks, because they can potentially also access and alter all security protocols and programs.

So, Konnech, which has numerous questionable ties to Chinese entities was allowed to punch a hole into our election systems, and then Konnech was allowed to grant that same level of access to unknown “contractors” in China.”

I began investigating Konnech on August 13, 2022, after Catherine Engelbrecht of TrueTheVote and Gregg Phillips of OPSEC shared the story of their 15-month involvement with what was characterized to them as a “counter-intelligence operation” with the Federal Bureau of Investigation into Konnech that had gone bad.

When the Bureau turned against Engelbrecht and Phillips, the pair sought out researchers with whom they could share what they knew.

Weeks later a federal court judge granted Konnech a restraining order against Engelbrecht and Phillips, forcing them into an unprecedented legal battle.

Their silencing makes it all the more important that we continue to speak out about the now substantiated subversion of America’s elections.

While the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office acknowledges that Konnech uses “Chinese contractors” and “third-party software developers,” the prosecutors fail to name Konnech’s Chinese subsidiary.

As I detail in my last two months of reporting and with recent confirmation from the New York Times, Konnech’s Chinese subsidiary is named Jinhua Yulian Network Technology (????????????).

Eugene Yu, also known as Jianwei Yu (???), established his Chinese subsidiary in Zhejiang, China, on Nov. 29, 2005.

Yu, who graduated from Zhejiang University in 1982 and lived in China until 1986, registered his Chinese subsidiary’s website “yu-lian.cn” to eyu@konnech.com on Feb. 25, 2006.

On a 2013 archived version of Yu’s website, the American election software CEO praised the vision of the former Chinese President, who he called “Comrade Jiang Zemin,” as he wrote in Chinese about his success with “Election Management Solutions Detroit” and “U.S. Overseas Voters.”

Chinese search engines reveal that as recently as 2018, Konnech’s Chinese subsidiary bid on Chinese government contracts to provide “electronic voting systems” to China’s National People’s Congress.

Patent transfers, employee profiles, and domain registrations divulge that Konnech is also profoundly connected to another Chinese election software firm named Jinhua Hongzheng Technology (??????????).

Hongzheng Technology operates in more than 20 provinces across China in partnership with Lenovo, Huawei, China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile as the premier voting technology provider for China’s National People’s Congress.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has designated China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, and Huawei as “national security threats.”

Eugene Yu registered Hongzheng Technology’s website “hongzhengtech.cn” to admin@konnech.com on July 31, 2015.