UC Berkeley professor installed secret camera, allegedly catching PhD candidate sabotaging fellow student’s work

BERKELEY — A UC Berkeley professor smelled a rat — over the years there had been $46,855 in damage from computers that failed, and nearly all of it seemed to affect one particular PhD candidate at the college’s Electronic Engineer and Computer Sciences department.

The professor wondered if the student’s luck was really that bad, or if something else was afoot. So he installed a hidden camera — disguised in a department laptop, and pointed it at the student’s computer. According to police, the sly move captured another PhD candidate, 26-year-old Jiarui Zou, damaging his fellow student’s computer with some implement that caused sparks to fly out of the laptop.

Now, Zou has been charged with three felony counts of vandalism, related to the destruction of three computers on Nov. 9-10. The charges allege the damage amounted to more than $400 each time, though the professor who reported the vandalism, and the affected student, told police they suspect Zou of the additional incidents that had been going on for years, court records show.

Zou was arrested on Nov. 12 at UC Berkeley’s Cory Hall and declined to talk to police, according to court records. He is due for his first court appearance on Dec. 15 and is no longer in custody, records show.

Zou has listed addresses in Richmond and Berkeley, according to police, who have not released the name of the professor who set up the hidden cameras.

The professor got permission from the building manager, authorities said. The alleged victim has an online profile listing his research as involving “reconfigurable switched-capacitor converters, high-efficiency hybrid switched-capacitor converters, multi-level converters, and power management integrated circuits.”