By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

A former software engineer for a telecommunications company based near Chicago was indicted for allegedly stealing trade secrets worth an estimated $600 million and trying to take the documents to China.

The FBI said Wednesday that Hanjuan Jin of Schaumburg, Ill., a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in China, was stopped at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Feb. 28, 2007, in a random search.

According to an affidavit filed by FBI special agent Michael R. Diekmann, Jin was traveling on a one-way ticket to Beijing at the time. She declared that she had $10,000 in U.S. currency in her carry-on luggage. Customs and Border Protection officers found about $30,000 in cash.

According to Diekmann, this prompted officers to further inspect Jin's luggage, whereupon they found several technical documents labeled "[Company A] Confidential Property," Chinese documents, a European company's product catalog of military technology written in English, a personal laptop computer, a thumb drive, four external hard drives, 29 recordable compact discs, and one videotape.