Federal investigators spent hours last Friday raiding two homes belonging to a cybersecurity professor at Indiana University at Bloomington, multiple local news outlets reported.
It’s unclear what investigators were looking for, but Chris Bavender, an FBI spokesperson, confirmed to The Herald-Times that the raid was “court authorized law enforcement activity,” and that the agency had “no further comment.”
Xiaofeng Wang, a tenured computer science professor and director of IU’s Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, has worked at the university for more than 20 years. But after numerous government agents began removing boxes from the Bloomington home Wang shares with his wife, Nianli Ma—who also worked for IU’s library as a systems analyst and programmer—neighbors told The Herald-Times they knew little about the couple, including their names.
Law enforcement also arrived Friday morning at a home belonging to the couple in Carmel, about an hour and 15 minutes north of Bloomington. A video taken by a neighbor and published by local NBC affiliate, WTHR, shows FBI agents shouting, “FBI, come out!” through a megaphone pointed toward the residence.
An unidentified woman then exits the home holding a phone, which agents confiscated before questioning her and later removing evidence from the home. The woman left the scene and returned hours later with her lawyer, who later told WTHR “they’re not sure yet what the investigation is about.”
According to The Bloomingtonian, Wang was fired from IU in early March. Both his and Ma’s employee profiles have been scrubbed from the university’s websites.