Tokyo

A Japanese biologist arrested two years ago under the US economic espionage act emerged with a light sentence from a courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, on 28 May.

But the trial has left the researcher's career in ruins — and raised worries about the use of this law against unwitting violators, and its potentially adverse effect on scientific collaboration.

Hiroaki Serizawa, then at the University of Kansas Medical Center, was arrested in May 2001 and charged under the 1996 act with allegedly helping a friend, Takashi Okamoto, by storing DNA constructs and cell lines that Okamoto had taken from his employer, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (see Nature 411, 225–226; 200110.1038/35077271).

Last year the charges against Serizawa were reduced to making “false statements” when questioned by FBI agents in 1999 (see Nature 417, 108; 200210.1038/417108b). Serizawa corrected the statements on the same day he made them, the prosecutors conceded.

Serizawa was fined the minimum $500, put on probation for three years, during which his movements within and outside the United States are restricted, and given 150 hours of community service.

This case was the first time that section 1831 of the act — in which the benefactor of the crime is a foreign entity — was invoked, and many scientists and lawyers in Japan and elsewhere questioned its use against Serizawa. Critics of the prosecution view the light sentence — as opposed to dropping charges — as an attempt to save face.

But Serizawa's career prospects remain bleak. Since his arrest in May 2001, his graduate students and assistants have left his laboratory, his university refused him tenure, and the American Cancer Society has terminated his grant. “My career was destroyed by the case,” Serizawa told Nature.

He says he would like to continue research, but it will be difficult to find an employer. The National Institutes of Health, for example, will not give grants to people convicted of criminal offences within the past three years, unless they have special dispensation.

The United States is still seeking to extradite Okamoto from Japan. Serizawa claims Okamoto deceived him, and has filed a civil suit in Japan against Okamoto to seek compensation, including $450,000 for legal fees.