Ex-GM engineer, husband found guilty of trade-secret theft

November 30, 2012 - 3:25 pm ET


DETROIT (Reuters) - A former General Motors engineer and her husband were
found guilty today of conspiring to steal the automaker's trade secrets for
hybrid and electric vehicles.

Shanshan Du, 53, the former GM employee, was ruled guilty of conspiracy to
possess trade secrets without authorization and two counts of unauthorized
possession of trade secrets. She was found not guilty of three counts of
wire fraud.

Du's husband, Yu Qin, 51, was found guilty on all six counts, as well as a
seventh count for obstruction of justice.

The trade secret counts carry a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and a
$250,000 fine. The wire fraud counts and an obstruction charge each carry a
penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing will
occur in February 2013.

The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for less than a full day
after the case was sent to them late on Thursday. The trial in U.S. District
Court in Detroit began on Nov. 5.

Du and Qin were charged in 2010 in a seven-count indictment with trying to
steal GM trade secrets related to hybrid vehicles to pass on to China's
Chery Automobile Co.

Attorneys for both Du and Qin argued the documents in question were not
trade secrets.

"There were no 'trade secrets' involved in this case. We are sorry the jury
did not understand that and we hope the court or the court of appeals will
set aside this verdict," Frank Eaman, Qin's attorney, told Automotive News
on Friday.

Du's attorney declined to comment.

Sentencing is scheduled for February.

Qin and Du, who worked as a GM engineer, were accused of taking confidential
GM information on hybrid technology and trying to pass it to Chinese
automakers through a small firm they owned called Millennium Technology
International, according to court documents.

Du was accused of copying thousands of GM documents to an external hard
drive five days after the automaker offered her a severance agreement in
January 2005.

She left GM's advanced technology group in March 2005. In August of that
year, Qin and Du proposed a joint venture on hybrids to China's Chery in a
series of emails, according to court documents.

Then in November 2005, Qin, who had been working as an electrical engineer
in Troy, applied for jobs as a hybrid engineer, claiming on his resume he
had invented some of the stolen GM technology, according to court documents.

The couple were required to surrender their U.S. passports and cannot leave
the Detroit area without court permission.

GM declined to comment on the verdict.