• Home
  • Congress
  • FUBAR
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Reader Rant
  • White House
Search
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Capitol Hill Blue
  • Home
  • Congress
  • FUBAR
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Reader Rant
  • White House
Home FUBAR California engineer gets 15 years for ‘economic espionage’
  • FUBAR
  • News

California engineer gets 15 years for ‘economic espionage’

By
PAUL ELIAS
-
July 11, 2014
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Pinterest
WhatsApp
    Robert Maegerle, left, walks out of a federal courthouse with attorney Jerome Froelich Jr. in San Francisco.  (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
    Robert Maegerle, left, walks out of a federal courthouse with attorney Jerome Froelich Jr. in San Francisco.
    (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

    A federal judge has sentenced a California chemical engineer to 15 years in prison and fined him $28.3 million for a rare economic-espionage conviction for selling China a secret recipe to a widely used white pigment.

    U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White said Thursday in Oakland that Walter Liew, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had “turned against his adopted country over greed.”

    A jury previously convicted the 56-year-old Liew of receiving $28 million from companies controlled by the Chinese government in exchange for DuPont Co.’s pigment technology for making cars, paper and a long list of everyday items whiter.

    Along with the $28.3 million Liew was ordered to forfeit and pay to DuPont, the engineering company launched by him and his wife was fined $18.9 million.

    White expressed doubt that Liew would pay back much of his debt.

    White noted that U.S. authorities had managed to trace $22 million of the $28 million received by Liew to various Singapore and Chinese companies controlled by Liew’s in-laws before losing the trail.

    “We’ll never get it,” White said. “It has been spirited out of the country.”

    Liew and his wife, Christina Liew, launched a small California company in the 1990s aimed at exploiting China’s desire to build a DuPont-like factory to manufacture the white pigment known as titanium dioxide.

    The Liews hired retired DuPont engineers and, according to the FBI, paid them thousands of dollars for sensitive company documents laying out a process to make the pigment.

    Two former DuPont engineers have also been convicted of economic espionage. Another engineer committed suicide in early 2012 on the day he was to sign a plea bargain acknowledging his role in the conspiracy.

    Except for a few months of release on bail, Liew has been in jail since his arrest in 2011. Wearing yellow jail garb and with his wife and family looking on from the gallery, Liew apologized for his actions.

    “There are many things I would have liked to have done differently,” Liew told the judge. “I regret my actions.”

    Liew was born on a farm in Malaysia to Chinese parents and went on to earn advanced degrees in chemical engineering.

    “He’s an ambitious man who made huge mistakes trying to make it into the big time,” said Stuart Gasner, Liew’s attorney.

    Liew’s wife has pleaded not guilty to obstruction of justice and other charges.

    In 2009, the Chinese government-controlled Pangang Group Co. Ltd. awarded the Liews’ company a $17 million contract to build a factory that could produce 100,000 metric tons of the pigment a year. The same company had earlier awarded the Liews’ company millions more in similar contracts for smaller projects.

    Prosecutors allege that the Chinese factory was built with a detailed DuPont instruction manual stamped “confidential” that was previously used to build DuPont’s newest plant in Taiwan.

    Robert Maegerle, a retired DuPont engineer, was convicted of economic-espionage charges along with Walter Liew in March. They are the first people to be convicted of economic espionage by a jury since Congress passed the Economic Espionage Act in 1996, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. About 20 other defendants have pleaded guilty to economic espionage charges before trial.

    Federal officials say foreign governments’ theft of U.S. technology is one of the biggest threats to the country’s economy and national security.

    “The battle against economic espionage has become one of the FBI’s main fronts in its efforts to protect U.S. national security in the 21st century,” said David Johnson, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the San Francisco office.

    Maegerle, 78, is to be sentenced later and remains free on bail.

    ___

    Copyright  © 2013 Capitol Hill Blue

    Copyright  © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights

    Share this:

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Email
    • Print
    • Google

    Like this:

    Like Loading...

    Related

    • TAGS
    • Espionage
    • Waler Liew
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Google+
    Pinterest
    WhatsApp
      PAUL ELIAS

      RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

      Analysis

      Discord, adultery and anger breaks up white supremacist groups

      FUBAR

      Dems sue Trump campaign, Russia, Wikileaks, others over 2016 election

      FUBAR

      Trump adds Giuliani to legal team for ‘star power’







      Our Privacy Policy

      We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site.

      These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

      Here is a url for more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies: https://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

      ABOUT US
      Capitol Hill Blue is the oldest political news site on the Internet's World Wide Web. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
      Contact us: editor@capitolhillblue.com
      FOLLOW US
      • Home
      • Congress
      • FUBAR
      • News
      • Opinion
      • Politics
      • Reader Rant
      • White House
      © 1994-2018 Capitol Hill Blue
      loading Cancel
      Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
      Email check failed, please try again
      Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
      %d bloggers like this:
        Edit with Live CSS
        Save
        Write CSS OR LESS and hit save. CTRL + SPACE for auto-complete.