Last Friday, November 30, former General Motors engineer Shanshan Du and her husband Yu Qin were found by a jury of nine women and three men guilty of conspiring to steal the Detroit carmaker’s trade secrets.
The 53-year old Du was found guilty of conspiracy to possess trade secrets without authorization and two counts of trade secrets, and not guilty of three counts of wire fraud. Her 51-year old husband was found guilty on all six counts, as well as a seventh, that is obstruction of justice.
The couple was charged in 2010 with trying to steal GM trade secrets concerning hybrid technology with the intent to pass them on to China’s Chery Automobile through the Millennium Technology International firm it owned.
According to the court, in January 2005, Du copied thousands of GM documents to an external hard drive five days after she was offered a severance agreement that she accepted, leaving the company two months later.
In August 2005, the couple sent a series of emails to Chery proposing a joint venture and in November Qin, who had been working as an electrical engineer, applied for a job as a hybrid engineer, including on his resume some of the stolen GM technology.
The couple’s attorneys said that the documents in question were not trade secrets, while GM declined to comment on the issue.
The sentence will be announced in February next year. The trade secret counts carry a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and a US$250,000 fine and the wire fraud counts and obstruction count each carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of US$250,000.
By Andrew Tsaousis
Story References: Reuters
2 Comments:
This is what happens when you hire foreigners instead of your fellow countrymen, whom just want a living wage but these evil traitorous corporate executives want slave labor from third world countries....Damn them all to Hell.
This has been going on in the car business since at least the 50s. A lot of the things that the Japanese started putting into their cars in the 60s were first developed by American companies, but those same US companies chose not to pursue development or put them into production. If it weren't for the Japanese, the US car industry would've stagnated entirely in the 70s and 80s.
Looks like the Chinese have taken over that role, trying to get their hands on technology that US auto manufacturers have every intention of sitting on for a decade, until they conclude the profit potential is worth investing the necessary R&D. Whereas the Chinese will do it now.
This is also the way virtually every corporations operates today, you get someone else to develop the technology or the product, then you steal it. it's become the preferred method for maximizing profit potential in the modern age. The Chinese learned this lesson and basically steal everything, they're just more blatant about it. But it's funny how only their operatives seem to get caught, prosecuted and exposed in the corporate owned media, isn't it?
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