The US Justice Department announced Friday the arrest of a Chinese national who allegedly stole trade secrets from a US oil company he worked for.

Tan Hongjin, 35, was arrested on Thursday in Oklahoma where he lived as a permanent resident.

The Justice Department said he stole trade secrets "related to a product worth more than $1 billion."

Tan, who lived in the United States for 12 years and has a PhD from California Institute of Technology, allegedly illegally downloaded hundreds of company files which included intellectual property related to the manufacture of the "downstream energy market product."

The department said he took the files for the benefit of a Chinese company that had offered him a job.

The employer was not identified, but a LinkedIn page identifies a materials scientist named Tan Hongjin as working for the Bartlesville, Oklahoma research center of Phillips 66, and Oklahoma media also linked him to the company.

The arrest came amid a broad US crackdown on Chinese government-backed hacking and theft of commercial data and secrets.

On Thursday the Justice Department unveiled indictments against two hackers allegedly tied to Beijing's security services who operated as part of a multi-year plan to break into the computers of dozens of US companies and agencies.

"The Chinese government is attempting to acquire or steal not only the plans and intentions of the United States government, but also the ideas and innovations of the very people that make our economy so incredibly successful," Bill Priestap, head of the FBI's counterintelligence division, told Congress last week.

Related Links

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Making the world hotter: India's expected AC explosion
Behror, India (AFP) Dec 4, 2018
Ratan Kumar once battled India's brutal summers with damp bedsheets and midnight baths. Now he is among millions upon millions of Indians using air conditioning - helping make the world hotter still. With India's AC market expected to explode from 30 million to a billion units by 2050, the world's second-most populous country could become the planet's top user of electricity for cooling. India is already the number-three spewer of greenhouse gases, burning through 800 million tonnes of coal eve ... read more