Los Angeles County will pay $5 million to election administrator wrongly accused of data breaches
Los Angeles County agreed to pay $5 million to the top executive of an election software company arrested in 2022 and charged with mishandling voter data in a case that prosecutors dropped a few weeks later, the attorney said. director this week.
The payment, which settles a lawsuit filed last year, is yet another turn for 66-year-old Eugene Yu, the co-founder of the software company Konnech.
Mr. Yu and his company faced a barrage of right-wing conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, including that Michigan-based Konnech had stored election data in China. Mr. Yu repeatedly denied sending data to China, including in a New York Times article about the false claims made as part of reporting on disinformation and elections.
Los Angeles prosecutors later arrested Mr. Yu while raiding his home and workplace. They accused him of embezzling government funds by storing data on poll workers in China, a violation of the contract with the province, along with conspiracy to commit a crime. Right-wing media pointed to the arrest as evidence that claims of widespread election interference were true.
Five weeks later, the prosecutor dropped the charges, citing concerns about “possible bias in the presentation” of evidence.
Mr. Yu sued Los Angeles County last year, claiming the arrest cost Mr. Yu and Konnech more than $80 million in lost business and other damages. His lawyers called the arrest “politically motivated” and “based solely on completely false conspiracy theories about Chinese election interference” in a press release announcing the lawsuit.
As part of the lawsuit settlement, the district attorney's office will not file charges against Mr. Yu. According to Mr. Yu's lawyer, the firm and Mr. Yu will also petition the judge to establish factual innocence.
The district attorney's office never clarified whether the company actually had data stored in China. The office and Los Angeles County did not respond to questions about the decision.
Gary S. Lincenberg, who represented Mr. Yu in his criminal trial, said: “Mr. Yu should never have suffered from his wrongful arrest, loss of business or damage to his good reputation.”
“But the settlement in his favor,” Mr. Lincenberg added, “represents a measure of compensation for the injustice done to him by the wrongful prosecution.”