Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal, Ford
Xiang Dong Yu, the former Ford engineer who was convicted of stealing trade secrets, has officially been sentenced to six years in prison. According to Reuters, the Beijing native was also ordered to pay a fine of $12,500 and will be deported after he serves his prison term. The 49-year-old Yu was arrested in 2009 on charges that he stole documents worth millions of dollars from his former employer during the 10 years that he worked for Ford.
Yu took a job with a U.S.-based company working in China in December of 2006 and copied some 4,000 Ford documents onto a personal hard drive before leaving or notifying the automaker of his new employer. The documents reportedly covered everything from engine and transmission details to electric power supply systems – all bits of information that would be incredibly tasty to China’s growing automotive industry. Yu eventually took a position with Beijing Automotive Corporation.
[Source: Reuters]
Followup: Ex-Ford engineer sentenced for industrial espionage originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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