2 Chinese men indicted in Little Rock, accused of conspiring to steal rice production technology

Two rice researchers from China were indicted Friday in Little Rock on accusations that they conspired to steal rice production technology to take the proprietary science back to China.

Cody Hiland, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and Diane Upchurch, special agent in charge of the FBI's Little Rock office, announced the indictments of Liu Xuejun, 49, and Sun Yue, 36, on charges of conspiracy to steal trade secrets and conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.

Hiland and Upchurch said the men were indicted over their involvement in the theft of rice seeds designed for use in the medical field. The seeds were developed by Ventria Bioscience, a company based in Colorado with a rice production facility in Kansas. They said the company used technology to create rice seeds that contained certain proteins, which could then be removed from the rice and used in medicine and pharmaceutical products.

"These rice seeds may be small, but the research and investment that went into the science that made them possible is of great value," Hiland said in a news release, noting that Ventria has invested about $75 million in developing the intellectual property behind the seeds.

"We remain vigilant in our efforts at protecting both intellectual and real property from theft by other nations," he said.

In 2013, when Liu and Sun worked at the Crops Research Institute in Tianjin, China, they visited several rice research and production facilities in the United States, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart. Liu was a professor and Sun was a research associate at the Chinese institute.

Upon the men's arrival at the airport in Honolulu on their way back to China, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents found stolen rice seeds in the men's luggage, the release said. It noted that the stolen seeds included some from both the Stuttgart research center and the Kansas production facility.

Weiqiang Zhang, a rice breeder at Ventria's Kansas facility, and Wengui Yan, who had worked at the Stuttgart facility since 1996 as a rice geneticist, helped organize Liu and Sun's trip to the United States, according to Hiland and Upchurch. Both Zhang and Yan were charged in a related federal case in Kansas in late 2013. In 2016, Zhang, 47, was convicted at trial and sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Yan, 63, pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI and was sentenced to a year in prison.

Both Zhang and Yan are natives of the People's Republic of China and were legally living in the United States when they were arrested, according to an earlier news release from the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City, Kan.

"Today's indictment of Liu and Sun should not go unnoticed by those who seek to steal our trade secrets and technology," Upchurch said in the news release. "This type of crime is consistent with China's social and economic five-year plan to modernize their seed industry."

Conspiracy to steal trade secrets is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, while conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property is punishable by up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000.

The case that was investigated by the FBI is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Bragg.

Metro on 08/04/2018

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