SoCal man pleads guilty to stealing trade secrets for Chinese company

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Southern California man pleaded guilty to one count of possession of trade secrets Thursday and admitted to stealing trade secrets from a longtime employer and then handing them over to a China-based company for financial gain.

Liming Li, 66, of Rancho Cucamonga, roughly 40 miles east of LA, worked for an unnamed company from 1996 to 2018, first as a software engineer, then a program manager and finally a chief technologist. The company, according to Li’s plea agreement, sells propriety software that “enables the integration of high-precision coordinate measuring machines with computer-based software.” In 2013, he signed a confidentiality agreement, agreeing to turn over all files, technology, trade secrets or data containing propriety information belonging to the company after he left his job.

In his plea agreement, Li admitted that he occasionally downloaded propriety information onto his personal devices without permission. Li was fired in 2018 but, according to the plea agreement, he didn’t turn everything over as agreed. Shortly afterward, Li started his own company — JSL Innovations. Two years later, he signed a deal with a China-based manufacturer Suzhou Universal Group Technology. In May 2023, federal authorities arrested Li.

As noted in the plea agreement, Li accessed the propriety information while working for Suzhou Universal, knowing it belonged to his former employer and that he wasn’t authorized to have it — but did so for his own economic benefit.

“Mr. Li’s greed allowed him to be used by a Chinese company without regard for the negative implications to the economy or national security of the United States,” said Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, in a written statement. “The FBI is well aware that China is actively seeking and stealing American intellectual property at a rapid pace and those who willingly hand it over, as Mr. Li has done and now acknowledged, will face serious consequences.”

Li’s sentencing is scheduled for May 8. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

A recent report by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, titled “China Threat Snapshot,” detailed more than 60 cases of espionage and intellectual property threat conducted by the Chinese Communist Party on U.S. soil in the last four years. The report estimates that the intellectual property theft amounts to between $300 billion and $600 billion every year.

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