Chinese-American engineer charged with stealing GE technology

A Chinese-American engineer faces charges of stealing valuable technology from General Electric, sneaking it out hidden in a picture of the sunset to take to China, the US Justice Department said.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered that Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, be released Friday on $100,000 bond and placed under electronic monitoring while surrendering his passport, according to the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York.

Zheng, a US citizen also believed to have Chinese nationality, had been arrested Wednesday by the FBI, which also searched his home. The agency allegedly found, among other things, a handbook detailing "resources" Beijing would grant to individuals providing certain technologies, court documents say.

Zheng's arrest comes as President Donald Trump intensifies his trade war with Beijing, largely over complaints the country steals US technology or obliges American companies to share know-how in exchange for doing business in China.

Trump imposed punishing tariffs on tens of billions in Chinese imports and plans more to ratchet up the pressure on Beijing to correct the pervasive industrial espionage.

General Electric said Thursday it had been cooperating with the FBI for "some time" on the case.

"At GE, we aggressively protect and defend our intellectual property and have strict processes in place for identifying these issues and partnering with law enforcement," a spokesman said.

- Working for Chinese competitors -

US investigators said Zheng may have begun stealing thousands of files containing GE's industrial secrets as far back as 2014, according to court documents.

And Zheng worked for or owned Chinese companies dealing in the same technologies produced by GE Power, which produces and markets energy generation techniques around the world, the FBI found.

"The GE proprietary technologies on which Zheng works would have economic value to any of GE's business competitors," FBI Special Agent MD McDonald said in an affidavit.

GE monitored Zheng as he allegedly transferred files containing turbine technology to his personal email account while hiding the data within the binary code of a digital photograph of a sunset, a process known as "steganography," according to McDonald.

Following a search of Zheng's home in Niskayuna, New York, FBI agents said they retrieved the reward handbook and a passport showing five trips to China in the past two years.

FBI agents questioned Zheng on Wednesday and say he acknowledged taking GE's proprietary information using steganography on around five to 10 occasions.

Charged with a single count of theft of trade secrets, Zheng faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 as well as three years of supervised release, although punishments are frequently imposed at less than that.

Related Links
Powering The World in the 21st Century at Energy-Daily.com

Tweet

Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly

paypal only

SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once

credit card or paypal

The relationship between charge density waves and superconductivity
Ames IA (SPX) Jul 25, 2018
For a long time, physicists have tried to understand the relationship between a periodic pattern of conduction electrons called a charge density wave (CDW), and another quantum order, superconductivity, or zero electrical resistance, in the same material. Do they compete? Co-exist? Co-operate? Do they go their separate ways? For the first time, physicists at Ames Laboratory and their international collaborators were able to explore that relationship in the superconducting and CDW material niobium ... read more