A blacklisted Chinese Communist Party-linked telecommunications company tried to steal walkie-talkie technology from Motorola, according to a newly unsealed indictment.
The Justice Department said China-based Hytera Communications Corp. was charged with conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets for allegedly conspiring with former employees of Motorola to steal digital mobile radio technology.
Federal prosecutors claim Hytera recruited and hired Motorola employees, then had them steal trade secrets from the Chicago-based company. Some of the Motorola employees accessed the trade secret information from Motorola’s internal database and sent multiple emails describing their plans to use the technology at Hytera, prosecutors said.
The 28-page indictment is partially redacted, with sections related to the names and identities of the defendants blacked out. It appears that it was filed under seal in May 2021.
WRAY SAYS THREAT POSED BY CHINA IS ‘MORE DAMAGING THAN EVER BEFORE’
The Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau previously determined last March that five Chinese telecommunications companies, including Hytera as well as the more well-known Huawei, “pose an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the security and safety of U.S. persons.”
Hytera pushed back in September by claiming that it has no ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
But lawyers for Hytera quickly noted in October that the Chinese company’s majority shareholder had agreed to sell 10% of the firm to a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned Shenzhen Investment.
And a November report by Internet Protocol Video Market, a surveillance industry research group, said that its investigation into Hytera’s links to the CCP found that Hytera’s own communications “clearly show Hytera’s significant ties and that it lied to the U.S. FCC to try to stop them from banning Hytera authorizations.”
The report said that Hytera “runs an official WeChat account for its Communist Party committee” with the account name translating to “Hytera Party Member Vanguard.” Internet Protocol Video Market said Hytera’s WeChat account said the company “always adheres to the leadership of the [Communist Party of China].” The report also pointed out that Hytera held a company “commendation event” for the 100th anniversary of the CCP’s founding last summer.
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Motorola said in February 2020 that, in a separate case against Hytera in federal court, a jury had awarded $764.6 million to Motorola, with Motorola’s CEO saying that “the jury’s verdict validates our global litigation against Hytera by definitively affirming that stealing trade secrets and source code will not be tolerated.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week that the bureau has more than 2,000 active investigations focused on the Chinese government attempting to steal U.S. information and technology, revealing the FBI is opening new China-linked counterintelligence operations every 12 hours.
“There is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China,” Wray said.
