Lee Neubecker Interviewed by Crains About GM Trade Secret Trial

Lee Neubecker, Forensicon’s President, was interviewed by Vincent Bond regarding the GM trade secret trial of Shanshan Du, a former GM engineer.  The case is part of a trend of industrial espionage that has menaced the auto industry — and major corporations and government agencies throughout the United States. “ Often, the greed of trade-secret thieves makes it easy to trap them during investigations.  With tiny thumb drives capable of holding huge amounts of information now commonplace, the thieves aren’t settling for stealing only one document,” said Lee Neubecker, president of Forensicon, a Chicago computer forensics firm with expertise in trade secrets.

“They aren’t taking one customer list. They’re taking database models. They’re taking historical [computer-aided design] files for how every product was designed,” Neubecker said. “Their greed is what I rely on in trying to figure out what happened.

Du and her husband, Yu Qin, faced charges of taking GM hybrid motor control technology for a business venture to build a hybrid vehicle in China with Chery Automobile Co., a Chinese automaker and GM competitor. Both were convicted Nov. 30 in U.S. District Court in Detroit of multiple felony counts. Sentencing is expected in February. Read More…