RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 22a0046p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT ┐ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, │ Plaintiff-Appellee, │ > No. 21-3513 │ v. │ │ SONG GUO ZHENG, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Columbus. No. 2:20-cr-00182-1—Algenon L. Marbley, District Judge. Decided and Filed: March 10, 2022 Before: BATCHELDER, NALBANDIAN, and READLER, Circuit Judges _________________ COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Steven S. Nolder, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Alexis J. Zouhary, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellee. _________________ OPINION _________________ NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judge. Song Guo Zheng lied on several applications for National Institute of Health (NIH) funding while employed at some of the country’s largest universities. Zheng pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining this federal funding, but on appeal argues that his trial counsel was ineffective by not seeking a downward variance at sentencing given his immigration status. Generally, however, we decline to review ineffective-assistance claims for the first time on direct appeal because the record is inadequate to establish any error. No. 21-3513 United States v. Zheng Page 2 Seeing no reason to depart from this practice, we DISMISS Zheng’s ineffective-assistance claim. I. Agents from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol confronted Song Guo Zheng after he arrived at the international airport in Anchorage, Alaska carrying a large amount of luggage, several electronic devices, bars of silver, his family’s expired Chinese passports, and a one-way ticket to China.1 FBI agents questioned Zheng, whom they had been investigating for nearly a year, and recovered more evidence helpful to their investigation into his fraudulent NIH applications. The jig was up. On the surface, Zheng had been a successful researcher and professor for years. Born a Chinese citizen, Zheng became a permanent United States resident in 2004. He served as a professor at the University of Southern California for nearly a decade, then at Pennsylvania State University from 2013 to 2019, before The Ohio State University hired him in 2019. During his time at USC, PSU, and OSU, Zheng performed research under federally funded grants from NIH. To receive NIH funding, universities submit detailed applications that must include, among other things, several disclosures. Both during the application process and after receiving an award, funding recipients must disclose to NIH all foreign collaborations, sources of foreign research support, conflicts of interest, and the like. But as it turns out, this was a problem for Zheng. He had many ties to Chinese organizations and these ties were both financial and information-sharing. To start, take the Chinese Talent Plans (CTP). Zheng became a member of both the CTP Hundred Talents Plan (HTP) and the CTP Thousand Talents Plan (TTP). These programs aim to recruit researchers to share developments with the Chinese government. For instance, in his application for the TTP, Zheng wrote that “biomedical products are basically monopolized by USA, Europe and Japan; the applicant will bring back several innovative products and conduct clinical transformation …
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