以下轉貼自中時電子報
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竊白顏料配方  華裔男子判15年
2014年07月11日 06:37

美國加州聯邦法官10日判處一名華裔化學工程師華爾特•劉(Walter Liew，音)把製造白顏料科技偷竊轉賣到中國有罪，應坐牢15年，另罰鍰2800萬美元(約新台幣8億3846萬元)。

奧克蘭市聯邦地院法官懷特判決書中說，劉「因貪婪而背叛歸化國（美國）。」

加州陪審團更早認為，今年56歲的劉姓男子有罪，由中國政府控制的公司收受2800萬美元，以換取化學大廠杜邦的白色顏料配方。

以下轉貼自 
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Walter Liew, California man, sentenced to 15 years for espionage
Published July 10, 2014 

 OAKLAND, Calif. –  A California chemical engineer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $28 million after his rare economic-espionage conviction for selling China the technology that creates a white pigment.

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that Walter Liew's theft of DuPont Co.'s secret recipe for making cars, paper and a long list of everyday items whiter warranted the lengthy prison sentence.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White said Liew had turned against his adopted country over greed.

A jury convicted the 56-year-old Liew of receiving $28 million from companies controlled by the Chinese government in exchange for DuPont's technology.

Liew acquired the technology by hiring retired DuPont engineers and paying them for their knowledge and sensitive documents they took when they left the company.

以下轉貼自
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/dupont-trade-secret-prosecutors-add-charges-against-liew.html
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DuPont Trade-Secret Prosecutors Add Charges Against Liew
By Karen Gullo  Mar 14, 2013 5:26 AM GMT+0800

California businessman Walter Liew was charged with seven new crimes, including filing false tax returns, in a revised indictment alleging he conspired to provide DuPont Co. (DD) trade secrets to a Chinese company.

U.S. prosecutors filed the new charges today in federal court in San Francisco.

China’s Pangang Group Co., Liew and two former DuPont employees were charged last year with conspiring to steal information about chloride-route titanium oxide, a white pigment used in paint, plastics and paper.

Pangang runs the largest titanium complex in China and is one of the country’s biggest titanium pigment producers, according to its website.

Liew, of Orinda, California, and the other defendants sold the confidential information to Pangang so it could develop a large-scale titanium-oxide factory in Chongqing, prosecutors allege. DuPont, based in Wilmington, Delaware, is the world’s largest manufacturer of titanium dioxide, and won’t sell or license its technology to Chinese companies.

Liew, owner of now-defunct Oakland-based USA Performance Technology Inc., has denied the allegations.

Liew has been in federal custody in Dublin, California, for 19 months. A trial hasn’t yet been scheduled in the case.

Cash Bond

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins in San Francisco agreed, over objections from federal prosecutors, to release him from detention on a $2 million cash bond.

Cousins said Feb. 27 said that keeping him in custody may violate his constitutional rights, noting that Liew is a U.S. citizen who has lived in the San Francisco Bay area for 30 years. Cousins increased the bond from $200,000.

Prosecutors appealed Cousins’ order, saying Liew is a flight risk and citing his family and financial ties to China and lies he allegedly told investigators. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who is presiding over Liew’s case, put Cousins’ release order on hold and scheduled a March 18 hearing on the detention matter.

Simona Agnolucci, an attorney for Liew, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail message seeking comment on the new charges.

The case is U.S. v. Liew, 3:11-cr-00573, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

 以下轉貼自
 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-05/california-man-guilty-of-stealing-dupont-trade-secrets.html

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California Man Guilty of Stealing DuPont Trade Secrets
By Karen Gullo  Mar 6, 2014 6:29 AM GMT+0800

DuPont Co. (DD)’s secrets for cleanly manufacturing the ubiquitous white pigment found in paper and plastics were stolen and sold to a Chinese company by a California engineer, a jury said, handing a conviction to U.S. prosecutors cracking down on economic espionage.

Walter Liew, 56, a consultant who rose from a farm in Malaysia to earn $28 million from contracts with a Chinese company, was found guilty by federal jurors in San Francisco of 22 counts of economic espionage, trade secret theft, witness tampering and making false statements. He sold the secrets to China’s Pangang Group Co., a Chengdu-based chemical company building a 100,000 metric-ton-per-year plant to produce titanium dioxide, a white pigment with a global annual sales of $14 billion, prosecutors said.

The convictions of Liew and an ex-DuPont engineer are a victory for the U.S. Justice Department, which has charged about 20 people in recent years with stealing U.S. technology for China. The Obama administration has said Chinese spy agencies are involved in a far-reaching industrial espionage campaign targeting biotechnology, telecommunications, clean energy and nanotechnology industries. This case marks the first federal jury conviction on charges brought under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, federal prosecutors said.

“As today’s verdict demonstrates, foreign governments threaten our economic and national security by engaging in aggressive and determined efforts to steal U.S. intellectual property,” Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, said in a statement.

Legal Documents

Pangang was charged, too, yet didn’t face trial after prosecutors were unable to legally serve legal documents on the company. Ex-DuPont engineer Robert Maegerle, 78, who prosecutors said helped obtain the trade secrets, was also convicted by the jury today on economic espionage, trade secrets and witness tampering charges.

The jury deliberated for four days after a trial that lasted almost five weeks and featured testimony by 33 witnesses, including engineers from Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont, the world’s largest producer of titanium dioxide, and rival manufacturers Tronox Ltd. and Cristal Global.

Liew, a U.S. citizen born in Malaysia, was taken into federal custody today after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who presided over the trial, said that millions of dollars Liew received from Chinese entities was unaccounted for and that his relationships with Chinese agencies were “substantial enough” that there’s a risk he would try to flee if released. The judge scheduled sentencing for June 10.

‘Very Disappointed’

“We are very disappointed,” Stuart Gasner, Liew’s attorney, said after the verdict. “Walter Liew is a good man in whom we believe and for whom we will continue to fight.”

An appeal of the conviction is likely, Gasner said.

The jury found Liew and Maegerle guilty of obstructing justice for claiming in a civil lawsuit DuPont filed against Liew that no information from a DuPont pigment plant in Taiwan was used in Liew’s company’s designs.

The maximum penalty for the most serious charges against the two is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Liew’s wife, Christina Liew, a Chinese citizen, was also charged with economic espionage, trade secret theft and witness tampering. She will be tried separately. She wept and clung to her husband before U.S. marshals took him into custody.