Inland Empire Man Liming Li Pleads Guilty to Possessing Trade Secrets Belonging to U.S. Employer
On February 27, 2025, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced that Liming Li, 66, of Rancho Cucamonga, a city in San Bernardino County, California, pleaded guilty that day to one count of possession of trade secrets. Li admitted that he downloaded his employers' proprietary information onto his personal devices, failed to return it after he was fired, and used it to market his own company and to work for a company based in China.
According to his plea agreement, from 1996 to 2013 Li worked for a Southern California-based business identified in court documents as "U.S. Company #1," which specialized in precision measuring instruments and metrological technology and equipment, designing and selling products such as micrometers, calipers, coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) and optical measurement systems. Li worked there as a senior software engineer, then as a program manager. From 2013 to 2018, he worked as chief technologist at a wholly-owned subsidiary of U.S. Company #1. During his employment at both, Li worked on the development of the source code for one of the company's software programs, which was considered its proprietary information.
In July 2013, Li signed an employee handbook and confidentiality agreement that required him to turn over all writings, records, files, technology, trade secrets and data containing any proprietary information belonging to the company, and that prohibited him from copying the company's proprietary information without written permission. Li admitted in his plea agreement that he occasionally downloaded the company's proprietary information onto his personal devices without permission, and that he failed to return all the proprietary information after the subsidiary terminated him in January 2018.
In February 2018, Li operated a consulting company named JSL Innovations Inc. In March 2020, he signed an employment agreement with Suzhou Universal Group Technology Co. Ltd., a China-based chain-and-bearing manufacturer, and continued to work for Suzhou Universal until his arrest in May 2023. During this period, the Justice Department said, Li continued to knowingly possess U.S. Company #1's proprietary information and, more than once, accessed it without the company's authorization. He admitted that he used the proprietary information for his own economic benefit and that it would injure U.S. Company #1's interests.
"Protecting U.S. companies' sensitive intellectual property is critical to our country's success in a global economy," said Acting United States Attorney Joseph T. McNally. "The defendant here stole intellectual property in order to benefit companies in China. Stealing proprietary information undermines our economic security and the U.S. Attorney's Office will aggressively prosecute individuals that engage in this conduct." Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, said Li's greed allowed him to be used by a Chinese company without regard for the negative implications for the economy or national security of the United States, and that those who willingly hand over American intellectual property, as Li has done and now acknowledged, will face serious consequences.
United States District Judge John A. Kronstadt scheduled a sentencing hearing for May 8, 2025, at which Li will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison. The FBI investigated the matter, with substantial assistance from the Department of Commerce's Office of Export Enforcement, Bureau of Industry and Security. The case was brought under the auspices of the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce, which seeks to counter efforts by hostile nation-states to illicitly acquire sensitive U.S. technology. Assistant United States Attorneys Aaron B. Frumkin and Solomon D. Kim and David T. Ryan of the National Security Division are prosecuting the case.
(Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：联邦调查局总部胡佛大楼（资料图，ajay_suresh 摄，CC BY 2.0）；本案由联邦执法部门调查、加州中区联邦检察官办公室起诉。 / Photo: FBI headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building (file photo by ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0); the case was investigated by federal law enforcement and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.
