Detroit News, 19 Nov 09: A former Ford Motor Co. employee was arraigned today in U.S. District Court on charges of stealing up to $32 million worth of trade secrets that he allegedly tried to sell to Chinese competitors.
Xiang Dong Yu, also known as Mike Yu, 47, of Beijing, China, was a Ford product engineer for 10 years. He left the company and moved to China in 2007, allegedly taking with him computerized copies of about 4,000 pages of confidential documents.
Yu was arrest last month at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport when he returned from China. The government says a laptop computer he was carrying contained thousands of pages of proprietary Ford documents and a large number of confidential documents belonging to another company not named today in court.
Yu was indicted in October on theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets and unauthorized access to a protected computer. . . . .
. . . . . Government agents discovered on his computer an application for Canadian citizenship and passport, which Corken theorized could lead to an escape. Corken also told the judge Yu fraudulently obtained a Michigan drivers license when he renewed a license he has held during the years he lived and worked here. . . . .
According to a federal indictment, Yu had access to “sensitive Ford design documents.” He is alleged to have made electronic copies of “system design specification documents” prior to leaving his job in Dearborn in 2007. The documents contained proprietary information about Ford’s engine and transmission mounting subsystems, electrical distribution systems, power supplies, electrical subsystems and generic body modules.
Prosecutors allege Yu started taking documents to the industrial city of Shenzhen, China, as early as 2005. Officials say he was hired in 2007 by PCE Industry Inc., a California-based subsidiary of a Taiwanese electronics company, Foxconn.
The government contends Yu tried to use the documents in 2008 to land a job with another Chinese company, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. He eventually was hired by Chinese automaker Beijing Automotive Corp.
