Dr. Lieber was charged with two counts of making and subscribing to a false income tax return, two counts of making false statements to federal authorities, and two counts of failing to report foreign financial accounts with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Dr. Lieber was arrested in January 2020, when he was the chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, along with two Chinese nationals for fraud.

Court documents showed that he had served as a "strategic scientist" for the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China without Harvard knowing. Dr. Lieber was also said to be a contractual participant in China's Thousand Talents Plan from 2012 to 2017. The plan is one of China's most prominent Chinese Talent recruitment programs designed to bring in high-level scientific talents for its own development.

Dr. Lieber reportedly had a three-year contract wherein he received $50,000 monthly, plus a living allowance of around $158,000. He was also given over $1.5 million to set up a research facility in WUT.