A federal judge in Chicago has fined a Chinese telecommunications company $50 million for criminally conspiring to steal proprietary technology from Illinois-based Motorola Solutions Inc. Beginning in 2006, China-based Hytera Communications recruited and hired Motorola employees and directed them to take proprietary and trade secret information from Motorola without authorization. The stolen information was related to Motorola’s digital mobile radio technology, which Motorola had developed through years of research and design. The engineers used the stolen information, including source code, to develop products for Hytera—at a fraction of the cost that it took Motorola to develop the exclusive technology—and competed with Motorola in the digital radio market through 2020.
Hytera pleaded guilty last year in the Northern District of Illinois to a federal charge of conspiracy to steal trade secrets. In addition to the $50 million fine, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp, Jr. has sentenced Hytera to a five-year term of probation, which includes conditions for maintaining an effective compliance program and annual reporting of the program to the government. Judge Tharp found that Hytera caused Motorola to lose $214 million in profits, but restitution was offset in full by payments previously made by Hytera as a result of a civil judgment.
The sentence was announced by Andrew S. Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Douglas S. DePodesta, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI. Valuable assistance was provided by the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas P. Peabody and Wesley A. Morrissette of the Northern District of Illinois.
Seven Hytera employees were indicted in 2021 in federal court in Chicago for their alleged roles in the thefts from Motorola. One of them, Gee Siong Ko, pleaded guilty in 2022 to a federal charge of conspiracy to steal trade secrets. As part of a plea agreement, Kok agreed to cooperate with the government in its investigation. Kok is awaiting sentencing. Warrants have been issued for the arrests of the six other defendants.
