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Ballantyne man pleads guilty to stealing trade secrets

CHARLOTTE, N.C. —  On Friday, Xi Wen Huang pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from U.S. government and American companies. 
 
Eyewitness News first broke this story in May and saw federal agents raid Huang's Ballantyne home.
 
Huang worked for a Charlotte-based company from 2012 to 2014. According to court paperwork, Huang stole "chemical formulas for the regeneration of catalysts, processes and procedures for the treatment of waste water, marketing information and lab designs".
 
Huang stole more than 100 documents from the company that contained trade secrets worth $25 million.
 
From 2004 and 2008, Huang worked for a government research facility. Before he quit that job, prosecutors say Huang stole U.S. military technology related to military vehicle fuel cells.
 
Huang then began working for another company as a staff engineer in 2008. While there, he stole more than 500 pages of documents related to 30 different products with research and development investments costing more than $65 million.
 
Court paperwork shows that Huang was not caught until he worked for the Charlotte company. Prosecutors say Huang disappeared during a business trip to China and lied about his whereabouts.
 
Huang admitted to using all the trade secrets he had gathered in order to open his own company in China. During that process, he also met with Chinese government officials.
 
During his plea agreement hearing, prosecutors revealed that Huang has also agreed to now help the U.S. government.
 
Huang's attorneys would not comment on how their client would help.
 
Shelley Riggers, a Davidson College professor of political science, said Huang's information could be valuable to the U.S.
 
"It's not particularly surprising that he would try to cooperate," Riggers said. "My guess is that he has some ability to provide deeper information how the Chinese government or Chinese corporations try to recruit people [to get information]."

Riggers said federal agencies are closely watching for U.S. trade secrets going into China, but she said the issue isn't exclusive to China. American intellectual property is illegally making its way to other countries.

“I think it's less about China and more about rapidly growing new economies that have the ambition to become technological leaders,” she said.

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