2 engineers sentenced for espionage
Two Silicon Valley engineers from China have been sentenced to prison for stealing chip designs and attempting to smuggle them back into their native country, the Associated Press reported.
The two men, Fei Ye and Ming Zhong, pleaded guilty two years ago. They were sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. According to the AP, they are the first ones convicted of the most serious violations under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996.
Ye is a U.S. citizen, the AP said, and Zhong is a permanent resident of the U.S.
Prosecutors did not allege that China's government actually knew of the crime.
The case started in late 2001 when the two men were arrested at San Francisco International Airport. They had been trying to board a plane with suitcases full of chip design documents from four companies they'd worked at, the AP said.
The four companies: NEC Electronics, Sun Microsystems, Transmeta, and Trident Microsystems. Ye and Zhong had been employed at Transmeta and Trident. Ye also had jobs at NEC and Sun.
Prosecutors said documents showed Ye and Zhong were trying to sell the idea of the start-up as a way to boost China's chipmaking abilities.
Natalie Weinstein is an associate editor who works out of Austin, Texas. She spent a decade as a reporter and editor in the newspaper industry before joining the CNET News staff in 2000. E-mail Natalie. 
Natalie Weinstein, is there a reason you didn't finish the article...??? I mean you left out the most important detail of the whole story.. WHAT was their sentence....?!?!
- by thelemurking November 24, 2008 7:15 AM PST
- Makes me wonder what the sentence would be in China if foreign workers were convicted of espionage for their home government. I may be going out on a limb here, but I would imagine it would be far more heinous than 1 YEAR IN PRISON!
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- by Harrison912 November 24, 2008 10:46 AM PST
- I agree! As a web site owner for safety and security prodcts, I find satisfaction in helping law abiding citizens stay protected and seeing the criminals punished. Too often, the criminals get off way too easy. I think it's the whole tolerance thing. Yes, we need to tolerate our differences and diversities but we should not tolerate convicted criminals in their sentencing. They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. What else is there to deter future crimes.
- Like this
-
(8 Comments)Somehow the US has this stigma that we are a cruel and torturous society when it comes to criminals... yet when you look at the middle east and how they just love to behead people... the Chinese firing squads and so on, we are relatively easy on our criminals.
With that being said, I still think that if situations were reversed and it was US scientists in China stealing secrets for the US government... the punishment would be vastly more harsh than what these guys are getting.