Part One: The LJ Konnech-tion
The "Curious Case" that kEePs GeTtInG cUrIoUsEr...
Out Of The Bag
Since the initial reporting, it’s now known that Konnech offers administrative solutions that include a series of one-off services on their Kranium product line, which are integrated in various ways into Konnech’s current larger offerings. Konnech offers solutions including a K-12 focused platform, an absentee voting platform, an election management system (EMS), a shake-to-vote system, a campaign management and signature collection platform, and GPS-driven software to guide people to polling stations or election-related locations.
The data alleged to have been found on a minimally secured server in Wuhan, China, protected only by the default password: “password.” The claim originated from an event known as “The Pit,” where Catherine Engelbrecht of True The Vote and Gregg Phillips of OPSEC disclosed the story of being passed information that would be highly sensitive to national security.
Led by a scandal-plagued field office in Detroit, a subsequent FBI-private joint investigation opened with cooperation and direct participation from Phillips and Engelbrecht, in light of obvious national security concerns. Depending upon who is asked, it’s still unclear (to me) what happened, but things changed.
These findings exist independently of any supposed data alleged to be held by anyone.
ICYMI
So far, readers and viewers who follow election “conspiracy theories” have learned through extensive incontrovertible evidence that the American company known as Konnech is also connected through a web of ownership, employees, and products to a series of companies in Mainland China.
Check out the work from Kanekoa The Great, The Authority, and DiggerSleuth on the matter for greater detail.
A Mysterious “LJ Connection”
Early in the research phase, some of the first discoveries were legitimate, confirmed business listings for both Konnech, Inc. and LJ Connection LLC. Another company, Engino Technologies Corporation also returned a result.
Eugene Yu incorporated LJ Connection, LLC on July 2, 2001, and Konnech, Inc. on March 20, 2002.
Yu dissolved LJ Connection, LLC on July 1, 2002, three months after legally establishing Konnech.
Yu also established Engino Technologies Corporation on March 11, 2003. It was dissolved on April 22, 2005.
One thing that stuck out during the first few weeks of research was how many different versions of the Konnech origin story were uncovered in archives, and that many of those portrayals were painted with a different combination of marketing points in relation to their origins.
There were several variations of how they portrayed themselves over the years. Here are a few examples:
In these four excerpts from self-released Konnech biographies, it can be extrapolated that:
There was a product either on the market, a product ready for LJ Connection to market, or a product in development and going to market, sometime in August of 2001 (founded July 2).
Within 4 months, Konnech presumably landed their first government contract, although in Canada, as “…LJ Connection’s reseller with voicemail and unified messaging…”
Within 10 months, Konnech/LJ Connection had a brand new product line ready for market and manufacture with an unnamed “server-based communications manufacturer.”
Yu started Konnech in either 1999, 2000, 2001, or 2002 with at least two professors from Michigan State University.
Relevant insight: Donna Wang, MD FAHA, is a distinguished professor and Director of Nanomedicine and Molecular Intervention at Michigan State University.
The LJ Connection business model was created around selling VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and computer telephony integration gateways.
In other words: LJ Connection was offering phone systems that use data transmission for communications instead of standard phone “landlines.”Only from what is inferred here, Konnech clearly had some degree of access to information on poll assets, locations, poll workers, election call centers, and election-night results as far back as 2016.
Konnech’s claim that professors founded the company (without any record of Yu ever having been a professor and with no operable leads), brought some pause in deciding how deep to reach into Konnech’s origins. But then, a break…
LJConn.com
As Konnech has been thoroughly covered previously, its stated predecessor, LJ Connection, deserves a bit of attention.
Following some crafty search-work, Konnech’s former identity LJ Connection’s website shed some light on what had previously been a shadowy topic:
Another hop back to January 6, 2002 yielded the above gem where we learn that it was a “university computer professor,” and “An engineer with fifteen years of experience in the telecommunications industry…” (another deviation from “professors”) who founded the company from a “dream to connect every phone to the internet.”
The skeletons emerged as the archive went deeper.
VoIP technology was the cutting edge of technology in the late 1990’s and the infancy of the 2000's.
By its apparent readiness for deployment on even the LJConn.com site in early 2002, this indicates that either LJ Connection developed cutting-edge, emerging technology and the software to manage it, or these products were already in production, soon to be deployed by LJ Connection, and later, Konnech.
The graphic below is a compilation of all products offered by Konnech on the top, then below the red line is LJ Connection’s line of products. The general date in the archive is listed in the right-center.
Through comparison of the two companies’ products in this graphic, Konnech obviously rebranded the very products that LJ Connection had been selling already.
The company that had begun just over a year before developed a line of successful emerging technology products and then rebranded them a year later?
Why was Konnech reluctant to cite their (what sounded to be respectable) origins at various points in their company’s history?
Stolen Valor?
Something was “off” about the needless changes in biographies offered by Konnech at various points in their existence. Call it intuition, or better, call it good habits. History typically holds the answers to everything, so a more meticulous look was needed.
Notice the “Best Of CTI Expo - Fall 1998” badge. Along with the 1998 badge is a Computer Telephony 1999 Judge’s Pick and two indistinguishable CTI badges.
Neither Konnech nor its self-declared predecessor, LJ Connection existed in either 1998 or 1999.
This introduced a 1999 Internet Telephony Editor’s Choice Award badge:
Obvious questions arose when these company-sourced documents suggested that LJ Connection/Konnech claims to have won awards before the companies even existed, according to their own archived website.
Hearkening back to the claim that Konnech was, “founded to market VoIP telecommunication gateways,” they appear to have had an already-award-winning product ready to go on day one, but where did it come from?
To find the answer, look no further than the Konnech-cited Internet Telephony, Computer Telephony, and the CTI Expo awards.
Ancient History
Some magazines in the late 90’s and early 2000’s focused on computerized or internet “telephony,” a new trend in computing technology. Instant messaging was the Bitcoin of the day, but VoIP* products, or “Voice over Internet Protocol,” were the “sexy” tech, consuming industry insiders like wildfire. It was an incredibly lucrative emerging market of the time.
*VoIP projects were laying the groundwork for the ability to speak on telephones connected by data connections instead of phone connections.
The major publications in this industry at the time were called Computer Telephony, Internet Telephony, and CTI, or Computer Telephony Integration. They were, and continue to be leading publishers and expo organizers in the niche field. They have each routinely published awards and hosted expos in major cities like New York and San Diego for around two decades.
The award announcements for 1999 Internet Telephony Product Of The Year read, “The Testing category…has grown from three to seven winners,” to accommodate the rapidly growing industry. The writer also explicitly hinted at a secret season of upcoming acquisitions within the sector.
There was one thing to note in connecting these awards — There was no mention of CC&T Technologies, LJ Connection, Konnech, or Engino Technologies winning any “Best Of-” award at the 1998 CTI Fall Expo, or none that could be located through resources available during this research.
Just before the 1999 CTI Expo, EDN published a list of vendors for the expo. It featured CC&T Technologies and listed their booth location at the top of the bio:
“CC&T designs and markets integrated hardware and software products and services that let customers develop and implement high-value telecom solutions…Software offerings consist of scalable Web-based account management, billing, and monitoring applications that can be used for the simplest to the most complex billing plans. The Internet Emulator is a product targeted specifically at developers and evaluators. CC&T products are installed worldwide.”
CC&T Technologies seemed to be at the forefront of the conversation.
From another publisher:
“Recently I journeyed to Michigan to visit CC&T Technologies...CC&T is a partner of 3Jet Network E&S Co., Ltd. (3Jet), a company in Zhuhai, China that manufactures and sells Internet telephony and network-related products and services.”
“…CC&T is helping its customers create a worldwide network of Internet Network Phone Servers (NPSs) to slash expensive international call rates and high access charges. One of CC&T’s ideas is to get large multinational corporations to build IP gateway servers in each branch office. The next step is to get these companies to resell any excess calling capacity through a CC&T consortium that would function as an international IP phone network. CC&T has even been working on the quality of service (QoS) problem with their own protocols and an intelligent buffer that can regenerate lost sections of voice waveforms.”
“CC&T offers a variety of VoIP computer boards and an interesting
Linux-based Internet / WAN emulator, the $3,000 EMIP-1.
”Unlike a lot of companies, CC&T designs its own boards…
”Two interesting available options are a Web-based channel usage monitoring system and a Web-based account management and billing information module.”
CC&T Technologies both designed and manufactured its own boards. A tiny technology company in Okemos, Michigan manufactured…their own boards…through a Mainland China company, 3Jet Network E&S Co., Ltd.
3JET Network E&S Co., Ltd.
3Jet is known in Mainland as 珠海斯瑞捷网络工程服务有限公司, or Zhuhai Sreijie Network Engineering Service (E&S) Co. in English.
A May 8, 1999 archived version of www.3jet.com revealed a broken down 3Jet site, but navigable nonetheless.
Through a not-so-convenient web of clicking pieces of Mandarin, broken image links and clever poking around, it was a challenge to get a grasp on 3Jet.
Here is another example of the generic blue badge that could actually mean anything or nothing (there are lots of promotional tricks inside growing industries like this), and the more specific badge, Internet Telephony 1999. We do know however, know that CC&T and 3Jet were regarded as a partnership for the award.
3Jet Network E&S was the Mainland China-partner and manufacturer for CC&T Technologies. Remember back to, “Unlike a lot of companies, CC&T designs its own boards…”—it brings to mind that American developers outsource technology manufacturing to [CCP] Mainland China. This has been standard industry practice for decades.
Computer Communication & Telecommunication Technologies, Incorporated
CC&T Technologies were among the first to have developed the very technology that eventually landed inside of Eugene Yu’s products at Konnech by way of LJ Connection.
CC&T Technologies was formed together by En-Wei Chai of Olney, Maryland and Lionel M. Ni of Okemos, Michigan. 3864 Hemmingway is a residential address.
About CC&T
From an archived April 6, 2001 CC&T Technologies “About CC&T” webpage:
“CC&T develops, manufactures, markets, and sells hardware and software centering on Internet technology. The Company was founded with the mission to develop advanced technology to provide high quality, feature-rich, and cost-effective equipment for convergence of data and voice communications. The Company's current objective is to continuously improve and enhance its hardware and software products and to expand its customer base and number of POPs (point of presence).
“The Company's long-term objective is to build and operate the CC&T Domain Network interconnecting these POPs to form a global service network that consists of many subdomains and CC&T controlled backbone network. Each subdomain has many POPs based on CC&T VoIP products, which are owned by a CC&T customer.”
"Another distinguishing feature of CC&T is its ability to develop and enhance many state-of-the-art short amount of time [sic]. This degree of quickness will allow CC&T to stay on the cutting edge of Internet and VoIP technology.”
“CC&T has been self-funded since its inception in February 1998. CC&T has recently expanded its strategic partnership with some leading telecommunication or VoIP players in Asia…and local telecommunication authorities to more efficiently and effectively penetrate the biggest profitable market segment in the world.”
So, in short, CC&T built software to work with their in-house VoIP hardware (“internet telephones” and commercial telephone networks). This software enabled the features listed above, which were the obvious backbone of LJ Connection and Konnech’s products, when viewed in hindsight.
Of note: CC&T’s website continued being updated and reworked as late as December 4, 2004 — about 2 1/2 years after Konnech’s incorporation.
EMIP-1 Internet Emulator:
Device That Started It All?
“This product is being used by the Chinese Government laboratory to evaluate different VoIP products.”
“Network emulation” allowed the programmer to create a digital environment that mimics that of a “wide-area network” connection. However, the programmer can set any series of predefined parameters for the emulation hardware and software inside the computer.
In other words, the computer can not be connected to a network, but it will think that it is connected, and that the connection is normal.
Lionel Ni and En-Wei Chai had produced an award-winning “network emulator” all the way back on the cutting edge of VoIP-as-a-service in 1998 to be used as a diagnostic tool, and was subsequently suggested to be included in all of LJ Connection and Konnech’s VoIP products. This is clear by the collective touting of the EMIP-1 onboard their individual new products.
Now for a look into how such a tiny computer company in Michigan could be such a revolutionary force in advanced computing.
“Andy” Chai, The Science Guy
Let’s go back to the original document when CC&T Technologies filed for incorporation in Michigan.
First up, En-Wei Chai’s chosen English name is “Andy” Chai.
En-wei “Andy” Chai has maintained the same address since 1986 in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.
En-Wei Chai is listed as an agent for Angoya, LLC, registered to the same address in Gaithersburg, Maryland as CC&T Technologies on his AllPeople.com profile, and Angoya, LLC is indicated to have been incorporated on January, 24, 2002.
There were several interesting correlations with some listed companies of geographic proximity to Angoya and CC&T Technologies. In my curiosity, I decided to look into some of the related listings.
Most striking was this Lansing, Michigan company, Angoya, Inc., that was incorporated fifteen months prior the Maryland listing.
This 2000-2002 window of time with Angoya, Inc. in Lansing, Michigan overlaps the launches of both LJ Connection and Konnech after whatever happened between the CC&T Technologies and LJ Connection entities. It bridges a crucial gap in time with one entity now very loosely associated with Konnech — CC&T Technologies, which was formally dissolved in 2004.
Angoya, Inc. would have been lost to the wind until this October 14, 2002 Michigan dissolution filing:
This makes it crystal clear that Lionel Ni and “Andy” Chai had a second business in legal operation for two years that touched in time all three players in question: CC&T, LJ Connection, and Konnech, but most importantly for this project, documented the reach of the CC&T founders’ Michigan business activity into 2002.
Then, an admittedly HUGE shock:
This reverse lookup on www.whoxy.com revealed that Lionel Ni owned angoya.com, registered to an official Hong Kong (HK) University of Science & Technology (UST) Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) email address.
Lionel Ni certainly wouldn’t be a student in Hong Kong in 2016, but he could be a professor.
But Lionel Ni, a presumptive father of Konnech, had direct ties to Mainland China, while working in some capacity to help launch Konnech, before Jinhua Yulian was even a thought…
…but we’ll get into that later.
In Summary
LJ Connection had products already on the shelf, grandfathered in from CC&T — concluded after dissecting a not-so-subtle series of promotional badges and looking closely at the concepts and technology behind the products.
For the technology’s novelty of the time, the timing of LJ Connection’s receipt of the tech, and the advent of CC&T’s coincidental departure from the market (and Lionel Ni’s departure from the United States), it’s incumbent to seek more clarity.
The Mainland China [CCP] Government was using this integral piece of technology from the Michigan-based company as far back as April 14, 2001.
Konnech ran a line of telephony products that were developed with an assortment of emerging technologies for the time, tied together by a centralized, stand-alone computing unit — developed, manufactured, built, sold, and marketed in-house by a ”tiny election company.” These products included the EMIP-1 Internet Emulator, also used by the CCP since at least 2001.
“Andy” Chai and Lionel Ni go back at least as far as 1998 when they registered CC&T in February of that year. Their journey together doesn’t end there, and the story doesn’t even begin there.
What else could be behind the curtain?