Pink Floyd poser arrested for theft by swindle

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — A man is accused of pretending to be a member of rock band Pink Floyd at a Minnesota hospital — and racking up as much as $100,000 in unpaid medical bills.

Police say the 53-year-old Monticello man went to St. Cloud Hospital for treatment April 20. He claimed he was Pink Floyd singer-guitarist David Gilmour and that he didn't have health insurance. He was treated and released, but not before signing an autograph.

The St. Cloud Times (http://on.sctimes.com/10rU8fe ) says hospital security was suspicious about the man's identity and his medical records were flagged. The man returned for more treatment several days later and, confronted by police, admitted he wasn't Gilmour.

The man was booked into the Stearns County Jail on a possible charge of theft by swindle.

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Information from: St. Cloud Times, http://www.sctimes.com

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Former GM engineer, husband sentenced in trade secret theft case

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A former General Motors Co engineer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and her husband was sentenced to three years for conspiring to steal trade secrets for use in China, federal prosecutors said.

Former engineer Shanshan Du, 54, and her husband Yu Qin, 52, each received sentences well below the roughly eight to 10 years that the government had sought. Both were sentenced on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani in Detroit.

Both defendants are U.S. citizens, and their case is part of a crackdown by the U.S. Department of Justice on trade secret theft, whether involving China or other countries.

Last November, a federal jury convicted Du and Qin on two counts each of unauthorized possession of trade secrets and one count of conspiracy to possess the secrets without permission.

Qin was also convicted on three counts of wire fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

The defendants had been accused of taking confidential GM information from the Detroit-based automaker related to hybrid vehicles, and trying to pass it to competitors, including China's Chery Automobile Co, through their firm Millennium Technology International.

Investigators accused Du of copying more than 16,000 GM files soon after the automaker in January 2005 gave her a severance offer. They said Qin later claimed, while pitching his services, to have invented some of the stolen GM technology.

"These defendants stole trade secrets, which General Motors spent many years and millions of dollars to develop, to give an unfair advantage to a foreign competitor," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade in Detroit said in a statement. "Stealing trade secrets harms Michigan businesses and costs jobs."

Prosecutors said GM has estimated that the value of the stolen documents exceeded $40 million. The defendants had argued that the documents in question were not trade secrets.

"I'm pleased that the judge went below the sentencing guidelines, and took into consideration Mr. Qin's contributions to the engineering field, his respect in that field, and his remorse," Qin's lawyer Frank Eaman said in an interview. He nonetheless said he was planning to appeal the conviction.

A lawyer for Du did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. McQuade's office was not immediately available for comment.

The case is U.S. v. Qin et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, No. 10-cr-02454.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

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Two congressmen urge USTR designate China for trade secret theft

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior Democrats in the House of Representatives on Thursday urged the Obama administration to formally target China for the theft of U.S. trade secrets, a move they said could lead to duties on Chinese goods if U.S. concerns are not addressed.

"As evidence mounts that the Government of China actively engages in the cyber theft of the trade secrets of American businesses, we write to request that you consider designating China as a Priority Foreign Country under Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974," the lawmakers said.

The letter from Representatives Sander Levin and Charles Rangel urged the Trade Representative's office to take the action when it issues the annual report on intellectual property protection on April 30.

Their recommendation is the latest sign of congressional frustration with alleged widespread theft of U.S. company trade secrets by competitors in China through both cyber attacks and more conventional means of economic espionage.

"It looks very much as though the Chinese government is stealing our companies' trade secrets and passing them along to their SOEs (state-owned enterprises), and possibly other Chinese companies," Levin and Rangel, the top two Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a letter to acting Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis.

"It is difficult enough for our companies to compete with the endless massive subsidies and other industrial policies of the Chinese government, but add trade secret theft into the mix and it is miraculous that our companies are able to compete at all," they added.

The White House last month rolled out a new strategy to tackle to trade-secret theft included greater use of existing U.S. trade tools, like the U.S. Trade Representative's annual report on countries with the worst records of protecting U.S. intellectual property rights.

USTR rarely designates any "priority foreign country" in that report. The category is reserved for those nations with the most onerous and egregious acts, policies or practices that threaten U.S. intellectual property and which have the greatest adverse impact on the United States.

Under the statute, USTR generally must initiate what is known as a "Special 301" investigation within 30 days of designating a priority foreign country, which could lead to the White House imposing import duties if U.S. concerns are not satisfactorily addressed, the lawmakers said.

"We have received the letter and are reviewing it," USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said.

USTR also could file a case at the World Trade Organization if it determines that the priority foreign country is violating international trade rules.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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