A software developer, Jin was accused of stealing more than 1,000 confidential documents from the Motorola Inc. office where she worked before heading to O'Hare Airport with a one-way ticket to Beijing. Among the secrets stolen by Jin, prosecutors contend, were descriptions of a "walkie-talkie" feature on Motorola cellphones that government attorneys have argued that could have benefited the Chinese military.
COMMENT: It appears that although Jin had a one-way airline ticket to China when she was arrested, the prosecution failed to prove that she was working on behalf of foreign government or entity.
Jin could be sentenced up to 10 years each of the three theft counts for which she was convicted. Castillo allowed Jin to remain free while she awaits sentencing, which is set for April 18, yet to prevent flight, he ordered that she wear electronic monitoring and be confined to her home.
When Jin was arrested at O'Hare on February 28, 2007, she was carrying $31,000 in cash and hundreds of Motorola documents, most of them stored digitally on a laptop computer, four external hard drives, thumb drives and other devices.
It is noteworthy to mention that before her arrest, she had already begun working for China-based Sun Kaisens, a telecommunications firm that government attorneys say develops products for China's military.
Out of seven cases referred for prosecution under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act of 1996 in 2010, six were linked to ethnic Chinese.
