Testimony about dumping shredded documents is heard in a federal trial of two Troy engineers, accused of conspiring to swipe trade secrets from General Motors.
Shanshan Du, a 53-year-old former GM advanced technology engineer, and her husband, Yu Qin, a 51-year-old electronics engineer, face seven counts of trying to steal GM trade secrets related to hybrid vehicles to pass on to a Chinese car company. The trial in U.S. District Court in Detroit began this week, as WDIV reports:
Several FBI agents described in court on Tuesday how they watched the defendants in May 2006 driving to a shopping plaza in Troy to throw away the bags of shredded documents. The agents also described seizing several computers, files and detachable hard drives from the couple's Troy home office. . . .
Du is accused of copying thousands of GM documents to an external hard drive five days after the automaker offered her a severance agreement in January 2005.
She left GM's advanced technology group in March 2005. In August, Qin and Du proposed a joint venture on hybrids to China's Chery Automobile Co. in a series of emails, according to court documents.
