The Chemours Company, a $6 billion global chemical company, suffered a massive leak of confidential information due to the insider’s harmful activities. 

According to the grand jury indictment detailing the crime, the employee of Chemours, Jerry Jindong Xu, had been stealing the intellectual property and trade secrets of the chemical company for a number of years. Xu had been working for Dupont China from 2004 till 2011. The Chinese citizen was transferred to the U.S. in 2011.

The period of Xu’s employment in Dupont-Chemours in the U.S. amounted almost six years up to June 2016, when he was fired. After a little while, Chemours contacted the ex-employee and asked him to return the intellectual property that was in his possession, because the Chemours InfoSec team detected him sending confidential documents to his personal email and coping trade secrets onto several removable drives. He claimed to have no such information and offered to Chemours two external hard drives for inspection.

Xu was arrested in August 2017, the next month the grand jury indictment of Xu for the theft of Chemours trade secrets was unsealed and the hearing was held on December 1, 2017. Jerry Jindong Xu would face up to ten years in prison.

The ex-employee used his position in the company to obtain Chemours methodology to process sodium cyanide as well as the plans for a new Chemours sodium cyanide plant, exceeding the amount of $150 million. Xu and his unidentified co-conspirator stole trade secrets and tried to monetize these secrets with Chinese investors. The details on manner and means of the conspiracy, provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, include the following activities:

Obtaining access to DuPont’s and Chemours’ trade secrets, confidential and propriety information

 

Transmitting the above mentioned information outside Chemours

 

Creating Xtrachemical and assigning his wife managing director to export sodium cyanide from China and to build a sodium cyanide plant

 

Communicating with potential Chinese investors using various means including an encrypted Chinese messaging service, etc.