Man convicted of giving firm’s trade secrets to rivals

Act was revenge for firing by Pasadena aircraft avionics company, officials say.

A 44-year-old Glendale man was convicted this week of stealing trade secrets from his former employer, a Pasadena aircraft avionics company, and distributing them to three competitors in a revenge plot after he was fired, officials said.

After a September bench trial, a judge convicted electrical engineer Derek Wai Hung Tam Sing of 32 counts of violating the Economic Espionage Act. Sing distributed trade secrets of Rogerson Kratos, allowing competitors to reverse-engineer the company’s products, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Sing was fired in 2012. Officials said the company took the action because he was late in arriving to work and on completing assignments, and had an unprofessional attitude.

In 2013, Sing used email addresses created under a fake name and the public Wi-Fi at Starbucks to send the stolen trade secrets to foreign and U.S. competitors that produced avionics.

A judge ruled that Sing illegally sent seven schematics — four of which he possessed illegally — to three companies, along with a document explaining the importance of the information and instructions on how to reverse engineer the products.

“Sing attempted to hurt his former employer by stealing its trade secrets, making the material easily understood by engineers at other companies, and using an assumed identity to send the proprietary information in the hope it would be used to develop a product to compete with his former employer,” U.S. Atty. Eileen Decker said in a statement.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in March.