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Motorola Employee Jailed After Selling Trade Secrets to Chinese Firm
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A former Motorola employee has been sentenced to four year in jail after being convicted of stealing trade secrets from the company.
Ms Jin possessed more than 1,000 electronic and paper Motorola proprietary documents when she was stopped by U.S. customs officials as she attempted to travel on a one-way ticket to China in February 2007. The documents were later seized by U.S. customs officials at O'Hare International Airport.
The information related to iDEN network technologies held by the company, now part of Motorola Solutions.
Hanjuan Jin, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China was found guilty in February but has only now been sentenced by the Illinois federal court. It had been expected that sentencing would have taken place back in April. The reason for the delay has not been made clear.
According to the evidence at trial, Jin began working for Motorola in 1998, and she took a medical leave of absence in February 2006. Between June and November 2006, while still on sick leave, Jin pursued employment in China with Sun Kaisens, a Chinese telecommunications company that developed products for the Chinese military. Between November 2006 and February 2007, Jin returned to China and did work for Sun Kaisens on projects for the Chinese military.
On Feb. 26, 2007, Jin returned to Motorola, purportedly to resume full-time work, and the following day applied for redundancy. During those two days she downloaded a large library of documents from the Motorola servers.
On the 28th Feb she attempted to catch a one-way ticket to China, but was stopped by officials.
Jin "criminally betrayed Motorola by stealing its trade secrets," Judge Castillo said in finding her guilty of three counts of theft of trade secrets in the original verdict.
Jin ha also been fined US$20,000 and ordered to remain in home confinement with electronic monitoring until starting her sentence on Oct. 25.
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