WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Foreign competitors typically recruit former employees to perform and engage in a range of illegal activities, including bribery, wiretapping phones and computer intrusion, according to the release.
“FBI officials today announced a nationwide campaign geared toward educating business and industry leaders about the growing threat, and mounting losses, of economic espionage.”
The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of the threat of economic espionage and to educate US corporations on identifying and preventing insider threats and security breaches.
“Those responsible for the theft are usually foreign competitors or governments looking for trade secrets, production methods, innovations, and even insights into labor or trade disputes.”
In July 2014, the United States sentenced Liu Yuanxuan to 15 years in prison and ordered him to forfeit $27 million in profits for stealing technology secrets from DuPont and selling them to state-owned corporations in China.
In 2013, an independent commission of US government and business leaders reported that economic espionage could cost US businesses “hundreds of billions” each year, the release explained, through the theft of trade secrets and intellectual property.
