Ex-Ford Worker Stole Trade Secrets
October 15, 2009 by Mark Ellis
Filed under Business
Xiang Dong Yu, a 47-year-old ex-Ford employee from Beijing, has been charged with theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets, and unauthorized access to a protected computer for his role in stealing more than 4,000 pages of documents from Ford Motor Co. Yu planned to use the documents to secure a job at a Chinese car company but was instead arrested.
Yu was arrested upon stepping off a flight from China at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and the attorney representing the man has yet to comment on the situation. According to the indictment, Yu worked for Ford from 1997 to 2007 and was able to access the company’s trade secrets, including Ford’s design documents.
The indictment of Yu alleges that the defendant accepted a job at a Chinese company in 2006, and between his acceptance to the new job and his last day at Ford, he managed to copy a total of 4,000 pages of secret documents onto an external hard drive. Ford first alerted the FBI when it began to suspect document theft and has confirmed its full cooperation with the authorities.
Image: Flickr
