Man arrested in alleged investment scam

A former Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researcher and Harvard University professor is scheduled to be arraigned today in Roxbury District Court on charges of bilking coworkers, students, and friends out of $600,000 they invested in a bogus Internet research company he claimed to have started in China to fight SARS, Boston police said.

Police said Weldong Xu, 38, of Brookline, persuaded a total of 35 people since last July to give him money for the research company, which he told them was dedicated to tackling severe acute respiratory syndrome, which caused an international scare last year. At Dana-Farber, where Xu was a researcher in cancer and AIDS vaccines, he persuaded co-workers to give him $160,000, with the agreement that the money would be returned within a few weeks, police said. When he was arrested, Xu told police he was investing the money in a Nigerian business venture in which he expected a $50 million return.

"I tried to tell him he had been scammed," said Detective Steve Blair, speaking at a press conference last night at Boston police headquarters. "His plan all along was this Nigerian investment."

Xu was arrested yesterday around 1 p.m. in the cafeteria at Dana-Farber. At the time, Xu was talking to a man who had given him $5,000 last July and told him he wanted it back. Blair said one person had taken out a second mortgage to give Xu the money. When the bills started coming in, he asked Xu for the money back.

Xu turned over a notebook to detectives yesterday containing information about the victims. Police said Xu did show some kind of documentation to some of the victims, but many took him at his word and trusted him to invest the money properly. "These were co-workers who trusted him and believed him," Blair said.

Mariellen Burns, director of media relations for Boston police, said Dana-Farber officials contacted police about Xu.