The chairman of Harvard University’s chemistry department was arrested on charges of lying about receiving millions of dollars in Chinese funding, in an escalation of U.S. efforts to counter what officials said is a plot by Beijing to mine U.S. universities to catapult China to the forefront of scientific development.

A federal criminal complaint alleges that Charles Lieber, a pioneer in nanotechnology, misled the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health about his participation in China’s Thousand Talents Plan while the U.S. agencies were spending more than $15 million to fund his research group in the U.S.

Through its government-backed Thousand Talents Plan and hundreds of similar programs, China pays scientists around the world to moonlight at Chinese institutions, often without disclosing the work to their primary employers.

The case was one of three presented Tuesday by federal authorities in Massachusetts, with each underscoring U.S. concerns that the Chinese government is trying to obtain cutting-edge U.S. research by exploiting U.S. universities and their professors and researchers. Prosecutors have brought a series of cases charging Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals working in the U.S., prompting concern in the scientific community that authorities were racially profiling people. Mr. Lieber is among the first non-Chinese scientists and highest-profile targets to date.

As part of the Thousand Talents program, Wuhan University of Technology gave Mr. Lieber more than $1.5 million to set up a research lab in China, according to the complaint.