[ISN] Ex-Ford Engineer Indicted For Allegedly Stealing Company Secrets

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http://www.darkreading.com/insiderthreat/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220601211

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading
Oct 16, 2009

Yet another major corporation may have been the victim of one of its own 
stealing trade secrets: A former Ford Motor engineer has been indicted 
for allegedly stealing thousands of sensitive documents from the company 
and copying them onto a USB drive before taking a job with another auto 
company.

Xiang Dong Yu, who also goes by Mike Yu, was arrested Wednesday at 
Chicago's O'Hare Airport after returning from a trip to China, according 
to published reports. Yu, 47, is charged in an indictment with theft, 
attempted theft of trade secrets, and unauthorized access to a computer 
and faces up to 10 years in prison. He currently works for an unnamed 
competitor to Ford in China.

Yu allegedly copied 4,000 documents that contained Ford design 
information, including engineand transmission mounting subsystems, 
electrical distribution systems, doors, mirrors, steering-wheel 
assemblies, power systems, and wipers. The indictment says he allegedly 
stole most of the information in December 2006, just before he resigned 
from his engineering job at Ford to take a position at a company in 
China. In spring 2008, he allegedly used some of the stolen Ford 
information while job-hunting in China.

"Employees and employers should be aware that stealing proprietary trade 
secrets to gain an economic advantage is a serious federal offense that 
will be prosecuted aggressively," U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg said in a 
statement.

[...]


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