Man lied about trying to take Wichita company’s trade secrets to China, feds say
An Oklahoma man who lied to U.S. customs officials about his laptop containing trade secrets from a Wichita-based aviation company as he was trying to leave the country has pleaded guilty, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas said.
Junjie “Jeff” Zhang, 57, of Tulsa, told U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who stopped him from boarding a flight in Dallas to China in 2019 that he only had personal and family information on the computer and a thumb drive, a news release says.
But the devices actually contained confidential and proprietary documents, graphs and blueprints belonging to the aviation company where Zhang worked that he wasn’t authorized to have. He also lied to agents about having his company’s permission to possess the documents, but that also wasn’t true, according to the release and his plea agreement.
Customs officials alerted the FBI, who contacted Zhang’s employer, the release says.
The estimated value of the stolen data is more than $100,000.
Zhang, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from China, worked for the Wichita company as a senior material and process engineer. His position gave him access to confidential and proprietary data. He was also the subject of a report to the FBI in 2018 “after an incident during a work trip to China where he displayed suspicious behavior”; his employer made that report, the release says.
“Americans invest heavily into technological research and development. Intellectual property theft causes U.S. companies across numerous sectors to lose billions of dollars a year. Often that cost ultimately falls on consumers,” U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser said in the release. “Not only are Internet hackers a risk for this theft but so are insider threats from rogue employees.”
Zhang pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of making a false statement. He is scheduled for sentencing on July 23.
