Xiaoqing Zheng, 55, of Niskayuna, New York, was arrested today in connection with a criminal complaint charging him with stealing trade secrets belonging to General Electric (GE).
The criminal complaint alleges that on or about July 5, Zheng, an engineer employed by General Electric, used an elaborate and sophisticated means to remove electronic files containing GE’s trade secrets involving its turbine technologies. Specifically, Zheng is alleged to have used steganography to hide data files belonging to GE into an innocuous looking digital picture of a sunset, and then to have e-mailed the digital picture, which contained the stolen GE data files, to Zheng’s e-mail account.
The defendant appeared today in federal court in Albany, New York, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Christian F. Hummel and was ordered detained without bail pending a hearing scheduled for August 2, at 1:30 p.m.
The charge filed against Zheng carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a term of supervised release of up to three years.
