WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is accusing six Chinese citizens, including three professors who studied together at the University of Southern California, of conspiring to steal sensitive wireless technology from U.S. companies, including Avago Technologies in Fort Collins.
The six individuals allegedly brought trade secrets relating to technology used to filter out unwanted signals in wireless devices from Avago and Skyworks Solutions Inc. back to China’s Tianjin University, according to an indictment unsealed late Monday.
They then set up a joint venture with the university to produce and sell equipment using the technology, according to the indictment, and won contracts to sell it to businesses and the military.
Avago and Skyworks supply components for Apple’s iPhone, among other devices.
“Sensitive technology developed by U.S. companies in Silicon Valley and throughout California continues to be vulnerable to coordinated and complex efforts sponsored by foreign governments to steal that technology,” San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, whose office is prosecuting the case, said in a news release Tuesday.
One of the defendants, Tianjin University professor Hao Zhang, was arrested when he landed at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday after he traveled from China, according to the Justice Department. The other five defendants are believed to be in China.
The charges come amid a heightened Justice Department focus on suspected economic espionage, especially by the Chinese. Last May, the department brought charges against five Chinese military employees who allegedly hacked into U.S. companies to steal trade secrets. And in March 2014, the U.S. won convictions of two engineers who allegedly stole the secrets to manufacturing a white pigment from DuPont Co. and sold them to a Chinese firm.
The charges relate to film bulk acoustic resonator technology, which is used in wireless devices to filter out unwanted signals. More advanced versions of such technology allow for smaller and more efficient wireless devices, according to the Justice Department. Some of those devices have military applications.
All three of the professors charged in the case received electrical-engineering degrees from USC in 2006. After graduation, they split up, with Wei Pang going to work for Avago in Fort Collins; Hao Zhang to Skyworks in Woburn, Mass.; and Huisui Zhang to Micrel Semiconductor in San Jose, Calif.
Soon, though, they began e-mailing about plans to create a business that would sell thin-film bulk acoustic resonator technology in China but soon ran into a glitch, according to the indictment.
“My work is to make every possible effort to find out about the process’s every possible detail and copy directly to China,” Wei, the Avago employee, wrote the group a month later, the indictment alleges.
Avago, a Hewlett-Packard spinoff, is headquartered in San Jose and Singapore, but its largest campus is in Fort Collins.
In another e-mail, Wei mentioned that their company would have an advantage over its competitors because it wouldn’t need to pay for research and development, according to the indictment. According to the indictment, Avago had spent 20 years and $50 million to develop its technology.
In mid-2007, Wei allegedly started to pitch Chinese universities on setting up a company that would manufacture devices using what the Justice Department says was stolen technology.
Over the next year, according to the indictment, Wei was hired by Tianjin University and began working with officials there to set up a company. At the same time, he apparently remained employed by Avago.
Until June 2009, Hao stayed in the U.S. and e-mailed documents detailing Skyworks’ technology to Wei, the indictment alleges, before leaving to become a professor at Tianjin as well. Wei officially left his job at Avago in June 2009, too, the government says.
Avago and Skyworks haven’t responded to requests for comment.
In the ensuing months, the professors and their alleged co-conspirators worked to set up companies and file patents in the U.S. and China that the Justice Department says were based on stolen technology. To hide their tracks and avoid tipping off their former employers, the scientists responsible for the theft didn’t file the patents in their own names, according to the indictment.
Avago learned about the thefts from the patent applications in the fall of 2011, according to the indictment, which states that on a trip to China later that year,
Wei’s old boss, Rich Ruby, dropped by his former colleague’s new lab, where he recognized technology stolen from Avago and confronted Wei about “stealing and using Avago trade secrets.”
