Oct. 18, 2022 - Epoch Times
12:19
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| This right here is a computer company called Connect. | |
| They are based out of Michigan, and they provide, among several other things, computer-related services to the election departments of various counties throughout the entire nation. | |
| And to give you an example of the exact type of election services that they provide, well, back in the year 2020, this company signed an agreement with Los Angeles County. | |
| Specifically, Connect was the winner of a five-year-long $2.9 million contract with L.A. County. | |
| And in exchange for this money, Connect was supposed to provide Los Angeles with an election worker management system, a system that they designed called PollChief. | |
| Now, PollChief was a piece of software designed by Connect to assist poll workers, meaning people who work at the election sites, with many different aspects of their jobs. | |
| Things like managing their assignments, facilitating communications between one another, as well as dealing with the payroll. | |
| Basically, it was a piece of software which was supposed to help poll workers to do their jobs. | |
| And under the terms of the contract that they signed with LA, Connect was supposed to securely maintain the poll worker data that was in their possession. | |
| The data pertaining to poll workers was supposed to be safely guarded, and access to that data should have only been provided to either U.S. citizens and or U.S. permanent residents. | |
| However, this is where things, well, you can say turned a little bit dicey. | |
| That's because about a week and a half ago, the CEO of this company, he was arrested for allegedly stealing as well as allegedly storing the personal data of LA County election workers on servers in China. | |
| Let me just repeat that. | |
| Earlier this month, the CEO of this company, Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu, he was arrested over in Michigan on charges of stealing the personal data of election workers within the County of Los Angeles. | |
| Now, before I go deeper and explain exactly what happened, I'd like to mention that although Mr. | |
| Yu has been arrested and charged, well, this is still an open case. | |
| And here in America, we are all innocent until proven guilty, including the CEO of this company. | |
| However, given the nature of this case and how it relates to the very security of our elections, I still believe that it's in the public interest for you to know exactly what's happening. | |
| And so I will lay out all the facts, but do keep in mind that this is still an open case that's pending investigation. | |
| Now, With that out of the way, let's dive in to exactly what we do know. | |
| On October the 4th, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office issued this statement right here titled, quote, And within the statement, the district attorney for L.A., well, they broke down exactly what they say happened. | |
| Here's what they wrote. | |
| Quote, | |
| District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to the contract, information was stored on servers in the People's Republic of China. | |
| Earlier today, Connect Corporation Chief Executive Officer Eugene Yu was taken into custody on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information by investigators from the District Attorney's Office Bureau of Investigation with assistance from the Meridian Township Police Department in Michigan. | |
| In addition, hard drives and other digital evidence were seized by Los Angeles District Attorney investigators. | |
| The District Attorney's Office is seeking Yu's extradition to Los Angeles. | |
| And so, as this statement describes, what wound up happening was that Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu was arrested over in Michigan and the L.A. County District Attorney's Office was asking for his extradition to Los Angeles. | |
| Then, you fast forward to today, and the extradition was complete. | |
| Specifically, three days ago... | |
| Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu surrendered himself to local L.A. authorities and he appeared before a Los Angeles County judge where he was officially charged with a felony crime of embezzling public funds. | |
| And during his court appearance, well, more details came to light about what exactly the prosecutors uncovered in the course of their investigation. | |
| That's because standing on the opposite side of Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu was Mr. | |
| Eric Neff, who was the L.A. County Deputy District Attorney. | |
| And he broke down what he referred to as an astounding breach of data. | |
| Specifically, he said that, quote, The amount of data involved in the breach was astounding. | |
| And he added that, quote, He further went on to say that, quote, Furthermore, | |
| the prosecutors also alleged that the data of many children might have also been compromised, because, quote, During the 2020 election, in the midst of the pandemic, the government had encouraged them, meaning encouraged kids, to work at poll stations so that the elderly, who generally make up a large portion of poll workers, could stay at home. | |
| It's a massive data breach. | |
| Now, among the documents we were able to obtain in the case is this official felony complaint from the L.A. County District Attorney's Office. | |
| This was actually filed with the court three days ago when the Connect CEO was standing in front of the judge. | |
| And this document, it goes even further in breaking down the specifics of what the prosecutors uncovered. | |
| Now, it's a little bit technical, but let me break it down for you in simpler terms. | |
| To start with, the prosecutors point out how the contract with LA County will require Connect to keep the county's data within the United States and allow access to this data only to US-based staff who are either citizens or lawful permanent residents. | |
| However, according to this document, despite these contractual obligations, Connect employees were sending the personal identifying information of election workers within Los Angeles to third-party software developers over in China. | |
| Here's where the complaint reads specifically. | |
| Quote, | |
| Furthermore, according to this complaint, the prosecutors also found that in August of this year, the Connect project manager who was in charge of the LA contract, he gave their Chinese contractors super administration access to the client that. | |
| Here's specifically what the complaint reads on this part. | |
| Quote, On or about August 18th of 2022, Louis Nebergoy, project manager of Connex Contract with the County of Los Angeles, confirmed via the messaging app DingTalk that any employee for Chinese contractors working on pole chief software had, quote, super administration privileges for all pole chief clients. | |
| Mr. | |
| Mr. Naborgoy described the situation as a huge security issue. | |
| However, what's interesting is that it looks like the same project manager, well, he changes tune a little bit when the CEO got arrested. | |
| That's because on October 4th, which is the very day that Eugene Yoo was arrested over in Michigan, the same project manager, well, he reversed course. | |
| Here's what the complaint letter says, quote: On or about October 4th of 2022, Louis Naborgoy, project manager for Connect's contract with the County of Los Angeles, sent an internal email to Connect employees, stating that the company was, quote,"...moving to a new stage in the company maturity, and we need to ensure the security, privacy, and confidentiality for our client data." Naborgoy further stated that to accomplish this, personal identifying information would no longer be included in the fixing of Connect's Pole Chief software. | |
| Now, the lawyers for Connect, both before and after Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu's arrest, have repeatedly denied storing their data over in China. | |
| And in fact, when the prosecutors laid out these claims in court... | |
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| Now, the lawyers for Connect, both before and after Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu's arrest, have repeatedly denied storing their data over in China. | |
| And in fact, when the prosecutors laid out these claims in court, well, the lawyer for Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu, she rejected the allegations outright, saying that there was no evidence that personal identifiable information was being distributed, saying simply that, quote, there's no breach in this case. | |
| Furthermore, besides denying the allegations in the context of the courtroom, well, Connect also sent out an email to all of their customers across the entire country denying the allegations as well. | |
| Here is part of what their email read. | |
| We have never hosted your data or system in servers outside of the United States. | |
| Any L.A. County poll worker data that Connect may have possessed was provided to it by L.A. County and therefore could not have been stolen as suggested. | |
| Regardless, though, it appears that not all of their customers are accepting that explanation, evidenced by the fact that Fairfax County, Virginia, has just stopped their use of Kinect's election software, and another county over in Georgia is in the process of doing the same thing. | |
| But again, I believe it's important to reiterate that everyone in America is innocent until proven guilty, and so we'll just have to wait and see how this entire case plays itself out. | |
| Now, in terms of the next steps, the prosecutors were actually arguing against Mr. | |
| Eugene receiving any kind of bail. | |
| Specifically, the deputy district attorney was arguing against bail on the basis that Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu, who, for your reference, is a naturalized American citizen, but who was born in China and lived there for 33 years, might flee the country. | |
| Specifically, the prosecutor said that, quote, And so the argument was that if he was let out on bail, Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu might flee the country. | |
| However, the judge in the case disagreed. | |
| And so at this very moment, Mr. | |
| Eugene Yu has been released on a $500,000 bond, and he remains under house arrest with an ankle monitor until his next hearing date, which for your reference is set for November the 17th. | |
| And so, we'll just have to wait until next month for any updates in this case. | |
| And once they come out, I'll be reporting them to you in real time. | |
| Until then, if you'd like to read all the documents in this case thus far, well, I'll throw the links to all of them down into the description box below this video so you can check them out for yourself. | |
| They're not that long, especially this letter that was... | |
| It's only about eight pages long, and it lays out the case pretty well, pretty rationally. | |
| So if you want to read it, the PDF will be down there in the description box below. | |
| It'll take you about 30 minutes to peruse, but it'll give you a good outline of the entire case. | |
| And of course, as always, as you're going to be making your way down there to that link for the PDF, take a quick detour to smash that like button so this video can be shared out to ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| And also, if you haven't already, consider subscribing to this channel as well. | |
| That way we can get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed every time we publish. | |
| And now, in closing, I wanted to mention something on a slightly different topic. | |
| Earlier today, on Epic TV, which is our awesome no-censorship video platform, I published a great episode. | |
| It's, quite frankly, a spicy episode regarding some of the tests that Pfizer has been running on their mice for their upcoming booster shot that was just approved by the FDA. Now, even though, again, everything in that episode is factual, everything is... | |
| Everything is properly sourced and everything is just based on documents from the company's press releases and different scientific peer-reviewed journals. | |
| Well, as you can imagine, those type of things are now welcome here on YouTube. | |
| So if you want to check out that awesome exclusive episode, you can do so over on EpicTV, our awesome no-censorship video platform. | |
| The link to EpicTV will be right there at the very top of the description box. | |
| I hope you check it out. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times. |
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