Former Employee Stole Ford Secrets Worth $50 Million

chicksdaddy writes "A ten year veteran of US automaker Ford pleaded guilty in federal court on November 17 to charges that he stole company secrets, including design documents, valued at between $50 million and $100 million, and shared them with his new employer: the Chinese division of a US rival of Ford's. Xiang Dong ('Mike') Yu admitted to copying some 4,000 Ford Documents to an external hard drive, including design specifications for key components of Ford automobiles, after surreptitiously taking a job with a China-based competitor in 2006. Yu, who took a job for Beijing Automotive Company in 2008, was arrested during a stopover at Chicago in October, 2009. The FBI seized his Beijing Automotive-issued laptop, and an analysis found 41 stolen Ford specification documents on the hard drive. He faces five to six years in prison and a $150,000 fine (PDF)."

Comments

Jump on the Cloud Everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on everybody.
Have all of your professional dialogs and emails and other creative or confidentially secret business files hosted on THE CLOUD.
You can trust all these big corporations who grow larger and larger, monopolizing everything from healthcare to off shoring jobs.

And when these cloud companies secretly lift your creation and sell it to one of their buddies who has more resources than you to get your stolen creation out the door, what are you going to do about it.
Nothing, all you'll say is damn. And then your ruined. Have fun with you patent wars, lawyers and careless cloud habits.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

What do you think Capitalism is?
You wanna earn a living and make a buck, STFU and stay off the cloud, if you know what is good for you.

I swear people have no clue on how to avoid drama.

Re:Property Theft

[pgmrdlm]

lol, I deserved that. You are quite correct that some countries do chop off your hand for theft.

Saudi Arabia Crime and Punishment\

Under the sharia, repeated theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand, administered under anesthetic.

Aggravated theft can be punished by cross-amputation of a hand and a foot. Such cases have been unusual, but Amnesty International reported four of them in 1986. In 1990 fewer than ten hand amputations took place, at least five of which were administered to foreigners.