Chinese Engineer Accused of Stealing General Electric Technology

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Xiaoqing Zheng, a U.S. citizen who has worked in GE’s Schenectady, N.Y. power division since 2008, allegedly used his position at the company to steal trade secrets, according to an affidavit filed by the FBI Wednesday and obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

Zheng, who also owns an energy technology company in China and holds senior positions at a number of other Chinese firms, encrypted the proprietary files within a photo of a sunset, which he sent to his personal email address, according to the affidavit.

A search of Zheng’s house yielded a handbook that details “the type of resources the government of China will give to individuals or entities who can provide certain technologies,” according to the affidavit.

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In addition to the email ploy, which took place on July 5 and resulted in Zheng’s arrest, he also “downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE’s computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive” in 2014, according to the affidavit.

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