Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 22 and This Week in Crime: Double Secret Probation

Remember when a Reston business illegally sold power amplifiers to Red China, which if it actually had oil instead of a billion workers happily filling the shelves of Wal-Mart with low-cost tchotchkes for Right-Thinking Americans, would be accused of using said power amplifiers, whatever they are, to build a nuclear weapon or weapons of mass destruction or a deadly remote-controlled blimp or something else that Will Not Stand, necessitating a 100-year war in a sandy country, but since they do and they are, we'll just slap the company here with a fine and hope they don't make our currency implode by continuing to buy our increasingly worthless debt by the wheelbarrowful?

Wow, that was a mouthful. Anyhoo, the company, Wavelab Inc. of Reston, got probation and a $15,000 fine.

WaveLab Inc. was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, after pleading guilty back in March to a single count of unlawful export of electronic components.

In court documents, the company's chief executive, Walter Zheng, admitted that WaveLab shipped hundreds of power amplifiers to China even though it knew the technology had military applications and required an export license that WaveLab lacked.

Maybe we're not the most savvy of Wall Street types, but we didn't even know companies could get probation. We thought probation was for folks who shoplifted at the Target or something, not a building with cubicles and a chain-smoking secretary out front. Does the company have to go to a seedy building once every other week and meet with a coffee-mainlining probation officer? Is it forbidden to leave the state, except for certain family events? Or is it even more insidious than that?