Five charged in US for scheme to steal GSK secrets
pharmafile | January 21, 2016 | News story | Research and Development | China, GSK, employee theft, trade secrets
Five people have been charged in the US for a scheme to steal secrets from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline and then sell them in China, including two former GSK researchers.
The indictments, announced by the US Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia on Wednesday, include conspiracy to steal trade secrets, commit wire fraud, commit money laundering, theft of trade secrets, and wire fraud. All of the alleged crimes were said to have taken place between January 2012 and December 2015.
The two researchers worked at a GSK facility in Upper Merion, near Philadelphia. The complaint said the information they helped steal could “potentially be sold for millions of dollars to rival pharmaceutical companies and it would also be useful information for a start-up pharmaceutical company.”
One researcher named as Yu Xue – a protein biochemist who worked at GSK from 2006 until she left the company this month – is alleged to have used her company email account to send trade secrets and confidential information relating to at least 12 GSK products, including cancer drugs, to her personal email account, before forwarding the information to the other four people charged in the case.
According to the indictment, these documents included slide presentations about drug designs. Xue and two other people accused in the case are said to have established three companies in China, to sell the stolen information, which could potentially have been used to copy in-development GSK drugs.
The other conspirators named in the complaint were former GSK scientist Lucy Xi, who left the company in November; Tao Li; Yan Mei and Yu Xue’s sister Tian Xue.
Xue’s lawyer said in an emailed statement that she denies the charges, and would “contest (them) vigorously in court.”
GSK responded to the case in its own statement that it did not believe the breach would have any material impact on its research and development activities.
Joel Levy
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