Chinese Telecommunications Company Fined $50 Million for Conspiring to Steal Technology from Motorola Solutions

CHICAGO — 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 Corp. LTD recruited and hired Motorola employees and directed them to take proprietary and trade secret information from Motorola without authorization.

The stolen information 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. on Thursday 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 ordered Hytera to pay restitution of approximately $214 million, which he also ordered is to be offset 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 KOK—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.

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Ray Hanania is an award-winning opinion columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.

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