Engineer sentenced for economic espionage
Man gets 24 months, becomes first imprisoned for trade secrets
The Associated Press
updated 3:46 p.m. ET, Wed., June. 18, 2008
SAN JOSE, Calif. - An engineer who admitted he
tried to sell fighter-pilot training software to
the Chinese Navy was sentenced Wednesday to 24
months in federal prison, in the first sentencing
for a newly defined intellectual property crime.
Xiaodong Sheldon Meng, 44, was sentenced on the
rare charge of committing economic espionage
against the U.S. ItÂ’s the most serious crime
under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 and
involves stealing trade secrets to benefit a foreign government.
Only five cases have been filed under the law,
three of them in Silicon Valley, which
authorities say is fertile ground for trade
secret thieves looking to make a quick buck or
bolster the technological and military development of foreign nations.
Meng didnÂ’t speak during the half-hour hearing in
U.S. District Court in San Jose. He stood with
his hands clasped and head down as Judge Jeremy
Fogel handed down a sentence in line with the
U.S. AttorneyÂ’s Office recommended punishment and MengÂ’s plea agreement.
Fogel commended MengÂ’s attempts to turn around
his life following his arrest in 2004 but said
MengÂ’s crime hurt United States national security and deserved prison time.
“This is a case where the court has to be
merciful but it has to be very firm,” Fogel said.
Could have gotten 25 years
Meng had faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in
prison after pleading guilty to two felony
counts: economic espionage and exporting
controlled military technologies. Because of his
lack of a criminal record before this case,
prosecutors agreed to seek a far shorter sentence.
Outside court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark
Krotoski said it was MengÂ’s focus on profits, not
a foreign allegiance, that drove him to steal the
trade secrets and to try to sell them to the
highest bidder. As such, MengÂ’s crime shouldnÂ’t
be punished as harshly as someone convicted of spying on the U.S., he said.
Meng is a Chinese national with Canadian
citizenship who lives in Cupertino, about 45 miles south of San Francisco.
“People have this image of a spy, but you can
cause a lot of harm without being a spy — you can
damage national security,” Krotoski said in an interview.
MengÂ’s defense lawyer, Manuel Araujo, said he
believed the punishment for his client was still
too severe. He described MengÂ’s actions as
“stupid” but said his client has undergone a “profound metamorphosis.”
“For him as an individual it was too harsh,”
Araujo said. “He’s a good man who got caught up
in the fast and loose trading of trade secrets.
The sentence might open the eyes of people who
don’t realize the consequences of these actions.”
Investigators say Meng went around giving sales
pitches to Asian military officials for software
stolen from his former employer, San Jose-based Quantum3D Inc.
No word on whether sale made
He was indicted in December 2006 on 36 felony
counts alleging he attempted to sell the
purloined programs to the Royal Thai Air Force,
the Royal Malaysian Air Force and the Navy Research Center in China.
Authorities have declined to say whether any of
the secrets were successfully sold. Krotoski said
officials in China apparently didnÂ’t know Meng
was trying to sell them stolen trade secrets —
just that they were dealing with a program of high value to the U.S.
In addition to serving the prison sentence, Meng is to pay a $10,000 fine.
Meng left the courthouse without commenting to reporters.
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Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:26 CST