Two-Year Term For Economic Spying

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
June 19, 2008 By Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif. - An engineer who admitted trying to sell fighter-pilot training software to the Chinese navy yesterday drew 24 months in federal prison, in the first sentencing for a newly defined intellectual-property crime.
Xiaodong Sheldon Meng, 44, a Canadian citizen raised in China, was sentenced for committing economic espionage against the United States. The most serious crime under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, it 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, a former employee of Quantum3D Inc. who was arrested in 2004, was also fined $10,000.
-- AP
 
Back
Top