Woman sentenced for stealing trade secrets

• Tweet

CHICAGO, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- A suburban Chicago woman was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for stealing Motorola trade secrets for a Chinese military company.

U.S. prosecutors said Hanjuan Jin, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen and resident of Aurora, Ill., was stopped in February 2007 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport carrying a one-way ticket to China. U.S. Customs officials seized more than 1,000 electronic and paper Motorola documents from her.

Prosecutors said Jin, a nine-year Motorola engineer, was secretly working for a Chinese company that developed telecommunications technology for the Chinese military. She was accused of stealing Motorola trade secrets related to its proprietary iDEN technology -- an integrated Digital Enhanced Network, a mobile telecommunications technology.

Jin was convicted of three counts of theft of trade secrets in February, but a judge found her not guilty of three counts of economic espionage for the benefit of the People's Republic of China and its military.

Jin was ordered to remain under house arrest until her sentence begins in October. She was also fined $20,000.