UC Berkeley PhD student Jiarui Zou has been arrested and charged with 3 felony counts of vandalism
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 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
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. 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.
Zou was arrested at UC Berkeley’s Cory Hall on Nov 12 and declined to talk to police. He 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.
The personal computer damage amounted to at least $2,119, but the total damage was ~$46,855. Zou is accused of damaging the equipment over a two-year period.
Zou is due for his first court appearance on Dec 15 and is no longer in custody.
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 had got permission from the building manager.
An online profile for the Pilawa Power Electronics research group at UC Berkeley describes graduate projects on reconfigurable switched-capacitor converters, high-efficiency hybrid switched-capacitor converters, multi-level converters and power-management integrated circuits.
According to the lab's website, those are the same technical areas tied to the equipment that was damaged.
https://mercurynews.com/2025/12/08/uc-berkeley-professor-installed-secret-camera-allegedly-catching-phd-candidate-sabotaging-fellow-students-work/?noamp=mobile…
UC Berkeley PhD student Jiarui Zou has been arrested and charged with 3 felony counts of vandalism 