A Chinese national living in the US has been accused of stealing a software program from his former US employer and selling a modified version to the Chinese government after being fired.
Yan Zhu, 31, a resident of Lodi, was arrested on Thursday for stealing programming source code needed to modify the encrypted program as well as internal sales materials from the company, the FBI said. Authorities would not name the company or identify its corporate headquarters, saying only that it was located in Mercer County, New Jersey.
He and two conspirators sold the program to environmental protection agencies in China’s Hebei and Shanxi provinces for about 10 percent of its US$1.5 million value, the FBI said.
The incident is the latest episode in the ongoing battle over intellectual property rights between the two countries. Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark field office, estimates that the number of federal investigations into Chinese economic espionage has increased 10 percent since 2001.
“This is an act of economic violence,” Dun said on Friday of Zhu’s alleged theft. “A significant percentage of the FBI’s economic espionage investigations are linked to Chinese government agencies, research institutes or businesses.”
Zhu has been charged with eight counts of fraud and one count each of conspiracy and theft of trade secrets. He faces 20 years in prison on each fraud count and 10 years in prison for the theft and conspiracy charges.
Zhu, who is in the US on a work visa, was a senior environmental engineer for the company from April 2006 to July last year.
The FBI said he played a key role in its efforts to sell the program, which allows users to manage air emissions and water quality, in China.
The FBI said he was fired after his employer learned he had sent source-code and promotional materials to his personal e-mail address and was attending business meetings in China with his two suspected conspirators, who were not named. Court filings indicate Zhu, a Columbia University graduate, said he needed the documents to work from home.
The Shanxi agency signed a contract with the company to purchase the program in July 2007, but switched to Zhu’s modified version after paying only about US$300,000 of the US$1.5 million it owed. The Hebei agency contacted the company about the same product in November of 2007, but wound up purchasing Zhu’s version 11 months later.
Zhu is being held in federal custody pending a detention hearing in Trenton tomorrow, when a decision on bond may be made.
David Schafer, the assistant federal public defender representing Zhu, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment on Friday.
A woman identifying herself as Zhu’s girlfriend answered the phone at his Lodi apartment. The woman, who only gave her first name as Anne, declined to comment on the allegations.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS