CEO Catches Stranger After Hours, Prompting Espionage Charges (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Samuel Straface thought he was the last one out the door one recent evening at the medical-technology startup he leads in suburban Boston. But as he passed a glass-walled conference room on the second floor, Dr. Straface says he saw a man he didn't recognize, sitting by himself in front of two open laptops and a tablet device. He continued walking a few steps toward the exit, but then, feeling uneasy, he turned back (Editor's note: the submitted link could be paywalled; alternative source). The man was later identified as Dong Liu, a dual citizen of China and Canada. And his after-hours computing at Medrobotics is at the center of an economic-espionage case brought by U.S. prosecutors. Mr. Liu is in federal custody, charged with attempting to steal trade secrets and trying to gain unauthorized access to the company's computer system, prosecutors said. If convicted of both charges, he could face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. "Mr. Liu adamantly asserts his innocence and we fully expect he'll be exonerated after a careful review of the evidence," said Robert Goldstein, Mr. Liu's defense attorney. The U.S. attorney's office for the District of Massachusetts declined to comment on the case beyond details in court records. Before his arrest, police said Mr. Liu told them he was there to discuss doing business with the company -- but Dr. Straface says no one had scheduled a meeting with Mr. Liu.

Comments

I'm normally against overcharging

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

But I think it's pretty clear from some of the stories about Chinese espionage that the only way we can disincentivize civilians from doing stuff like this is to completely upend their existence. Ex charge this guy with economic espionage, violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and whatever else, then throw everything from criminal trespass to theft of services (if he's on the company's network).

Re:I'm normally against overcharging

[Solandri]

It's worth pointing out that corporate espionage is not frowned upon in the East the way it is in the West. The prevailing attitude in East Asian countries (slowly changing) is that if you didn't take sufficient measures to safeguard your company's secrets and they got stolen, it's your own damn fault. In fact, employees are often expected to steal from competing companies when they can, and can be fired if they're ordered to conduct corporate espionage and they refuse.

This is why piracy is so rampant in East Asian countries. The concept of media being protected by law even though they lack any real protection, is foreign (again, slowly changing).

When Western countries were tripping over themselves to help China build high speed trains eagerly agreeing to conditions like doing the fabrication in China, I just shook my head at their naivete. And predictably, after China had gleaned enough knowledge to build the trains themselves - either by direct observation of the construction machines and plans, or by outright theft - they booted the Western companies out and began building the trains themselves. The Western reaction is "that's not fair!". The East Asian reaction is "how stupid can these guys be?"

Re:Computer security.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read TFA:

"He gave inconsistent answers when questioned by police about how he got into the building, which is secured 24 hours a day and requires a key card to gain entrance, court papers said."

Dual citizen of China & Canada?

[thomastan]

You cannot get dual citizenship with China. Is this article accurate/believable?

No more business as usual

[LeftCoastThinker]

The US needs to make China aware that this state sponsored economic terrorism will no longer be tolerated. I vote that every time there is a theft of US technology, we VOID $10 billion (minimum) of US treasuries held by China. Make it $50 billion if it is a military contractor. If they want to steal our technology, they are going to pay out the ass for it. If they run out of US debt, start putting a 1% tariff on all goods imported for a year, per incident. Watch companies start to flee China as the cost of producing goods there to import to the US skyrockets while the Chinese economy craters.

We cannot survive as a nation with the parasite of China continuously stealing our manufacturing, manipulating trade deficits and now stealing our technology. We either have to change or we are going to collapse.

And to all you globalists out there rooting for the US to fail, I hope you like living under a jack booted dictatorship with zero freedom and can speak Russian or Mandarin, because that is what will happen to you about 10 days after a US collapse.

Re:"There for a meeting"

[AntronArgaiv]

Except...they caught the guy. Might actually help us learn more about how the Chinese do economic espionage, because they got his computers, too.

15 years max sounds on the light side. But it's Federal, which means no parole. This is totally theoretical, anyway, since if Dong is convicted, the Chinese will immediately arrest and convict a random US diplomat and then swap him for Dong.