US Jails Chinese Scientist for Stealing $1bn of Trade Secrets

A Chinese scientist convicted of stealing trade secrets worth $1bn from an Oklahoma petroleum company has been jailed in the United States. 

Hongjin Tan was employed by the unnamed company in June 2017 to work in a group whose goal it was to develop next-generation battery technologies for stationary energy storage. 

Vigilant coworkers caught the 36-year-old Chinese national and US legal permanent resident stealing hundreds of files containing proprietary information specifically related to flow batteries.

After being confronted with the theft, Tan admitted intentionally copying and downloading the research and development materials onto a thumb drive without authorization from his employer.

Realizing the jig was up, Tan turned in the thumb drive along with his resignation in December 2018. But when investigators examined the storage device, they found evidence that five documents that had been stored on it had since been deleted. 

The missing files were later located on an external hard drive recovered during a search of Tan's premises. It transpired that Tan had swiped the files and squirreled them away at home, where they could be accessed, and potentially sold, at a later date. 

On November 12, 2019, Tan pleaded guilty to theft of a trade secret, unauthorized transmission of a trade secret, and unauthorized possession of a trade secret.

Speaking at the time, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said: “Tan’s guilty plea continues to fill in the picture of China’s theft of American intellectual property.

"The Department launched its China Initiative t ..

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