Couple charged with GM hybrid tech theft theft, hybrid, Couple, tech, charged

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http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/22/ ... section=money_autos

Couple charged with GM hybrid tech theft
by Peter Valdes-Dapena, senior writerJuly 22, 2010: 5:31 PM ET



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Federal authorities in Detroit charged a Michigan couple Thursday with stealing information about hybrid vehicle technology from General Motors and attempting to put it to use for a Chinese car company.

Yu Chin and his wife Sanshan Du of Troy, Mich., have been charged with, among other things, unauthorized possession of trade secrets and wire fraud.

According to the charges, from December 2003 to May 2006 Du conspired to obtain trade secrets about the automaker's hybrid vehicle technologies and passed that information to her husband who used it for the couple's own company, Millennium Technology International (MTI).

In January, 2005 GM offered Du, then a GM employee, a severance package. About five days later, she copied thousands of GM documents to a computer hard drive used for MTI business, authorities allege.

MTI later entered into a business venture to provide hybrid technology to the Chinese automaker Chery Automobile, a company that is a competitor of GM's in China.

In May 2006, the couple drove to a dumpster behind a grocery store where they discarded bags of shredded documents related to the case, authorities charge.

GM estimates the stolen information to be worth about $40 million, according to an announcement from U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.

"We cooperated with the U.S. attorney's office in developing the case and will continue to cooperate with them as appropriate," GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said.

CNN has not yet been able to reach the couple or their lawyers.

A Chery Automobile spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

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http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbc ... EM06/100729945/1131

Chery says it was unaware of GM technology theft case

Automotive News -- July 23, 2010 - 12:01 am ET
UPDATED: 7/23/10 8:21 a.m. ET

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -- China's Chery Automobile Co said today it was unaware of a U.S. case of alleged theft of General Motors technology that had been linked to the Chinese firm.

A Detroit couple was charged on Thursday in a U.S. court with conspiring to steal trade secrets related to hybrid vehicles from GM to pass on to Chery, a major Chinese car marker.

"We had no idea about this issue until we read about in the media," Jin Yibo, spokesman for Chery, told Reuters by telephone.

"It seems strange to us and we don't understand why Chery's name is being linked to this matter."

Yu Qin, 49, and his wife Shanshan Du, 51, of Troy, Mich., were charged in a seven-count indictment that was unsealed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

Qin and Du, who worked as a GM engineer, are accused of trying to pass stolen information to Chinese automakers through a small firm they owned called Millenium Technology International.

Du is accused of copying thousands of GM documents to an external hard drive five days after the automaker offered her a severance agreement in January 2005.

She left GM's advanced technology group in March 2005. In August, Qin and Du proposed a joint venture on hybrids to China's Chery in a series of e-mails, according to the indictment.

Then in November 2005 Qin applied for jobs as a hybrid engineer, claiming on his resume that he had invented some of the stolen GM technology, prosecutors say.

The counts charging conspiracy to possess trade secrets and unauthorized possession of trade secrets carry a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

The wire fraud counts, and an obstruction charge, carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.