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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A former laboratory engineer at a Los Angeles-area defense technologies company is facing a federal charge alleging he stole thousands of secret files, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
Chenguang Gong, 57, a native of China who became a United States citizen in 2011, was arrested Tuesday and is being held pending a detention hearing Wednesday in federal court in Northern California, according to the DOJ.
Gong, who has a temporary residence in Thousand Oaks but lives in San Jose, is charged with one count of theft of trade secrets in a criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court.
According to court documents, Gong transferred more than 3,600 files from the unidentified Malibu-based research and development center that develops sophisticated infrared sensor technology intended for use in various space-based and military missions, including in systems designed to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
Much of the work is funded through contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense and other government contractors, the DOJ said.
Some of the files allegedly taken by Gong were later found on storage devices seized from Gong's temporary home, according to court papers, which state that Gong sought funding from the Chinese government.
Together with the United States government and others, the company "has invested tens of millions each year for more than seven years to develop the technology," an affidavit in the case states, and it "would be extremely damaging economically" to the company if the technology were obtained by its competitors and "dangerous to U.S. national security if obtained by international actors."
As alleged in the affidavit, the company hired Gong in January 2023 to work as an application-specific integrated circuit design manager responsible for the design, development and verification of its infrared sensors. Beginning in late March, and continuing until his termination on April 26, Gong transferred thousands of files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices, including more than 1,800 files swiped after he had accepted a job at one of the Malibu company's main competitors, the government alleges.
Many of the files Gong allegedly transferred contained proprietary and trade secret information related to the development and design of a readout integrated circuit that allows space-based systems to detect missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles and a readout integrated circuit that allows aircraft to track incoming threats in low visibility environments, according to court papers.
The information was among the company's most important trade secrets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the complaint, and many of the files were marked for "official use only" and "export controlled," federal prosecutors stated.
The charge of theft of trade secrets carries a possible penalty of up to 10 years in federal prison, the DOJ noted.