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Reuters

A Canadian resident of China has been arrested in the United States for allegedly stealing electric car manufacturer Tesla’s trade secrets and conspiring to sell them to undercover police.
Klaus Pflugbeil, the operator of a China-based business that sells technology used in electric vehicles, was arrested on Tuesday in New York, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said.
He had travelled for a meeting with undercover agents whom he had believed were Long Island businesspeople, prosecutors said.
Pflugbeil and business partner Yilong Shao built their business using trade secrets belonging to “a leading US-based electric vehicle company,” prosecutors said. Shao was also charged but remained at large.
Tesla offers China-made electric cars for sale in Canada
They are charged with conspiracy to transmit trade secrets, which carries up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors did not name the US-based company, but said it acquired a Canada-based manufacturer of battery assembly lines in 2019. That matches the description of Tesla’s acquisition of a Canadian company named Hibar.
Both Pflugbeil and Shao are former employees of the Canadian company, prosecutors said.
“The defendants set up a company in China, blatantly stole trade secrets from an American company that are important to manufacturing electric vehicles, and which cost many millions of dollars in research and development, and sold products developed with the stolen trade secrets,” Breon Peace, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement with officials with the Justice Department and FBI.
A lawyer for Pflugbeil did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment Tuesday night. Shao could not be reached for comment.
Tesla also did not immediately return an email message.
Additional reporting by Associated Press


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Klaus Pflugbeil, the operator of a China-based business that sells technology used in electric vehicles, was arrested in New York
Prosecutors said Pflugbeil planned to sell the trade secrets to undercover agents whom he had believed were businesspeople


Klaus Pflugbeil, the operator of a China-based business that sells technology used in electric vehicles, was arrested on Tuesday in New York, prosecutors in Brooklyn said.
