Wife Charged in Chinese Company Trade Secret Theft
The wife of a Chinese company’s chairman was charged last week in federal court in Des Moines, IA, with conspiracy to steal trade secrets from U.S. seed corn companies, reported bloomberg.com.
Mo Yun is accused of conspiring to steal trade secrets from 2007 to 2013, U.S. prosecutors said in a statement. She is the wife of DBN Group’s chairman Shao Genhou, who is on Forbes magazine’s list of world billionaires with a net worth estimated at $1.4 billion.
| …court documents read like an espionage novel with Chinese men found crawling on their knees in Midwest cornfields, secretly stealing corn ears, and federal agents obtaining court orders to tap the cell phone and bug the rental car of the CEO of Kings Nower Seed. |
“The FBI’s investigation into Mo Yun should not go unnoticed by those who seek to steal trade secrets and private business information,” Thomas R. Metz, special agent in charge of the Omaha division of the FBI, said in a statement. “Identifying and deterring those focused on stealing trade secrets, propriety and confidential information or national security information is the number two priority for the FBI, second only to terrorism.”
The Associated Press reports that court documents read like an espionage novel with Chinese men found crawling on their knees in Midwest cornfields, secretly stealing corn ears, and federal agents obtaining court orders to tap the cell phone and bug the rental car of the CEO of Kings Nower Seed, a DBN Group subsidiary.
Including Mo Yun, a total of seven Chinese nationals have been indicted in the case. S