Chinese-Born Federal Reserve Worker Says He Was Treated Like a Spy

Photo by “Beyond My Ken” via Wikimedia Commons

A Phoenixville man who was terminated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in 2013 has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the bank, alleging that he was fired because of where he was born: China.

Dongpei Huang, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, is a naturalized American citizen. He joined the Fed as a “Senior Specialist” in 2012 after nearly two decades working in private industry in various finance and risk consulting positions. According to his lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia’s federal court, he did his job well and received frequent compliments on his work from management at the bank, earning an annual salary of $129,500. But that all changed on October 30, 2013.

Huang says it was on that date that he received an email from his manager with the subject line “Desktop security,” requiring Huang to meet with the manager and a representative of the bank’s Information Services department the next day.

At the meeting, Huang was asked why he tried to send a PowerPoint presentation from the office to his personal email account earlier that month. He explained that it would have been much easier to work on the presentation on the large computer monitor he had at home and pointed out that the system blocked him from forwarding the file. As Huang tells it in his lawsuit, that was that, and both of the other people at his meeting seemed to accept his explanation.

One week later, Huang says he was “intercepted” after passing through the security entrance at the bank and brought into a conference room, where he was questioned about sending emails from his work account to his personal account. He says he was told that he had violated the bank’s policy — a policy he said he was unaware of — and then he was fired.

But that wasn’t all. As he sat there in the conference room trying to make sense of what was going on, two FBI agents walked in, according to the lawsuit. Huang says they showed him a search warrant for his home, explaining that investigators were already at the house, and then interrogated him. He claims he was asked about his Chinese friends, connections he had by family to people in China, and telephone calls he had made to China. Investigators removed computers, hard drives and other equipment from his house.

In the end, Huang claims that he was “completely exonerated” by the FBI, but the bank still won’t give him his job back. (As an FBI spokesperson confirms, the FBI does not “exonerate” people. They would not confirm or deny the existence of any investigation into Huang, but he was never charged with a crime.)

Huang says in the lawsuit that the only reason he was treated this way — and the only reason the bank won’t rehire him — is because he was born in China. In other words, Huang is arguing that the bank discriminated against him because of national origin, and that would be a violation of his civil rights. He is seeking unspecified damages above $150,000.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is one of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks that make up the Federal Reserve System. A spokesperson told us that the bank does not comment on pending litigation.