Ashley Yablon says he may never feel safe.

The Plano lawyer received death threats from cellphone numbers registered under his former employer. His ex-wife was followed down the street by a 1960s yellow taxi cab. Men in black suits sat in the same restaurant as them at dinner. He spoke with his former wife outside their home with the sprinklers running loudly.

Those are just a few of the oddities Yablon says he encountered in his life as a corporate whistleblower.

The 49-year-old is the employee who triggered a five-year investigation exposing telecommunications company ZTE for violating U.S. sanctions against selling American products to Iran. He told the FBI about the Chinese firm’s illegal operations selling surveillance technology.

And when ZTE wanted him to cover it up as its U.S.-based general counsel, Yablon said, he knew he needed to do something.

What he did ended up costing ZTE over $1 billion in fines in 2017 and thrust the company into a high-stakes tariffs battle between then-President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping. In a plea deal with the U.S. government, ZTE was permitted to resume buying U.S. parts for its smartphones and telecom networks. But it also had to purge its board of directors and C-suite.

Yablon is telling his version of events in a book titled Standing Up To China: How a Whistleblower Risked Everything for His Country. It comes out this month from Dallas-based Brown Books Publishing Group.

ZTE’s attorney at the time, Wendy Wysong,...

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