By: Andrew Harris

A CME Group Inc. (CME) employee was charged by the U.S. with stealing trade secrets from the world's largest futures exchange for a Chinese start-up company in which he was to hold a financial stake.

Chunlai Yang, 49, of Libertyville, Illinois, has been in federal custody since his July 1 arrest on a single theft-of- trade-secrets count, punishable by as long as 10 years in prison, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"They discovered that thousands of files had been downloaded to his computer and some were then copied to removable storage devices," including files that were "critical to the operation of the CME Group," according to the FBI.

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