The wife of a Chinese company's chairman was arrested in California
after she was charged in an indictment filed Wednesday in federal court
in Des Moines with conspiracy to steal trade secrets from U.S. seed corn
companies.
Mo Yun, 42, was arrested Tuesday in Los Angeles. She is a citizen of
China. A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt said he could
not comment on whether she was in the U.S. on a work or visitor visa or
why she was in California.
Her arrest is the latest development in a case Klinefeldt announced in
December in which several employees of Beijing Dabeinong Technology
Group Co., known as DNB Group, or its subsidiaries were alleged to have
stolen patented seed corn from fields in Iowa and Illinois and shipped
it to China to try to reproduce its traits.
The indictment filed in December listed six men as part of the
conspiracy. An updated indictment filed Wednesday added Mo Yun to the
list and provided further details about the operation the government
alleges continued from January 2007 to December 2012.
It said Mo Yun was in charge of DBN Group's research project management
team while she was employed by the company from August 2001 to March
2009.
She is the wife of DBN's chairman Shao Genhou, who is on Forbes
magazine's list of world billionaires with a net worth estimated at $1.4
billion. Mo Yun also is the sister of Mo Hailong, also known as Robert
Mo, the international business director for the company, who was
arrested in Miami in December for his alleged role in the case. He free
on bail awaiting trial. His attorney did not immediately respond to a
request seeking comment. An attorney was not yet listed for Mo Yun.
"The FBI's investigation into Mo Yun should not go unnoticed by those
who seek to steal trade secrets and private business information,"
Thomas R. Metz, Special Agent in Charge of the Omaha Division of the
FBI, said in a statement. "Identifying and deterring those focused on
stealing trade secrets, propriety and confidential information or
national security information is the number two priority for the FBI
second only to terrorism."
Court documents read like an espionage novel with Chinese men found
crawling on their knees in Midwest cornfields secretly stealing corn
ears and federal agents obtaining court orders to tap the cellphone and
bug the rental car of the CEO of Kings Nower Seed, a DBN Group
subsidiary.
The FBI also placed GPS devices on cars and tracked the men as they
moved around the Midwest countryside stopping at cornfields and buying
bags of seed from dealers in Iowa and Missouri.
The indictment also lists Li Shaoming and Wang Lei, both executives of
the Kings Nower subsidiary. They were in the U.S. on visitor visas. Also
indicted are Ye Jian and Ling Yong, both residents of China, employees
of Kings Nower, also in the U.S. on visitor visas; and Wang Hongwei, a
Canadian citizen and resident of Quebec.
The indictment said federal agents heard some of the men discuss in
January 2007 how Mo Yun was in charge of the operation and the hope was
to gather 1,000 pieces of corn hybrids. The court document said in 2008
Mo Yun told Mo Hailong how happy they were with the seeds they being
sent and explained how they were testing the DNA of seeds.
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