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A Canadian man who lives in China was arrested Tuesday and held in New York after he and a enterprise associate have been accused of attempting to promote secret battery manufacturing expertise belonging to Tesla.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn requested a choose to carry Klaus Pflugbeil with out bail on a cost of theft of commerce secrets and techniques. He was arrested after assembly with undercover brokers Tuesday on Lengthy Island and attempting to promote them expertise used to provide battery elements, the workplace of the U.S. legal professional for the Japanese District of New York mentioned in a press release.
The second man, Yilong Shao, 47, a Chinese language citizen, stays at massive, prosecutors mentioned. A public defender representing Mr. Pflugbeil, 58, didn’t reply to requests for remark late Tuesday.
Court docket paperwork recognized the corporate whose secrets and techniques have been stolen solely as “a U.S.-based main producer of battery-powered electrical autos and battery vitality programs.” That description and different particulars in courtroom paperwork match Tesla.
Mr. Pflugbeil and Mr. Shao are each former workers of Hibar Techniques, a Canadian firm that offered expertise for battery manufacturing that Tesla acquired in 2019. That they had entry to drawings and different paperwork that allowed others to repeat the manufacturing course of, in response to prosecutors.
After the sale of Hibar, the boys shaped an organization that attempted to promote the agency’s expertise through adverts on Google, posts on LinkedIn and a YouTube video, in response to courtroom paperwork. They have been conscious the expertise was proprietary, prosecutors mentioned.
Undercover brokers met Mr. Shao at a commerce present in Las Vegas in September and expressed curiosity in shopping for the data, which Tesla had confirmed was secret. The brokers persuaded Mr. Pflugbeil to go to New York by telling him they needed to work out a deal.
The arrest demonstrates that the federal government “will prosecute those that interact in theft of commerce secrets and techniques that locations U.S. companies at a aggressive drawback, undermines innovation and creates a possible nationwide safety threat,” Breon Peace, the U.S. legal professional for the Japanese District of New York, mentioned in a press release.
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