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.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
A man has survived clinging to the outside of an Austrian high-speed train, Austria’s state railway said on Sunday, reportedly after it left while he was having a cigarette break. The man late on Saturday grabbed onto the outside of the train at St Poelten, west of Vienna, and was later taken onboard after the train performed an emergency stop, railways spokesman Herbert Hofer said. “It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying,” he said. “And you’re not just putting yourself in danger, if you end up under the train there’s rescuers, there’s police, fire
RSS