US charges Chinese software engineer Xudong Yao with stealing trade secrets from former American employer
- The suspect, also known as William Yao, is considered a fugitive and is believed to be back in China, US prosecutors say
- Yao, who faces nine counts of theft of electronic files, worked for a locomotive manufacturer in Illinois
A Chinese software engineer has been indicted on charges of stealing American trade secrets from his former employer, the US government announced on Thursday – the second Chinese national in two months to be declared a fugitive by federal law enforcement officials.
A grand jury charged Xudong Yao, also known as William Yao, with nine counts of theft of electronic files from a locomotive manufacturer based in Illinois, according to the indictment, which was filed in December 2017 but unsealed only this week.
Yao, 57, is at large and believed to be in the country, prosecutors said.
When Yao travelled from China to Chicago in November 2015, “he had in his possession the stolen trade secret information, including nine complete copies of the suburban Chicago company’s control system source code and the systems specifications that explained how the code worked”, the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois said in a statement.
The indictment said that Yao, within weeks of being hired in August 2014 and through the first half of 2015, downloaded more than 3,000 electronic files containing his former employer’s trade secrets, including “control system software source code designed to operate [the company’s] locomotives”.
After Yao’s employment was terminated in February 2015, he returned to China to begin working for a company based there that sells “automotive telematics service systems”, according to the court document, which stops short of alleging that the defendant turned his former company’s data over to the Chinese company.