SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- A federal grand jury in San Francisco charged five people with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets on behalf of Chinese state-controlled companies.
The U.S. Attorney's office said the case involved the alleged theft of the process for producing an industrial chemical pigment from the DuPont company.
"The conduct alleged in the superseding indictment reveals a methodical effort by foreign interests to misappropriate valuable U.S. technology by using individuals operating within our borders," Stephanie Douglas, special agent-in-charge of the FBI in San Francisco. "The goal of this scheme was to obtain the benefit of research and development investments by U.S. companies, without making the same investment of time and money."
Prosecutors said in a written statement Wednesday the alleged scheme involved a relationship between China's Pangang Group and USA Performance Technologies, an Oakland, Calif., engineering consulting firm. USA Performance allegedly obtained sensitive information from DuPont about the production of chloride-route titanium dioxide and relayed it to Pangang, which planned to build a factory to produce the compound in China.
Pangang allegedly paid some $20 million for the information, which was funneled to the owners of USA Performance through bank accounts in Singapore, prosecutors said.
