An engineer at General Electric’s Niskayuna, NY, turbine manufacturing plant is facing charges of stealing the company’s trade secrets, federal officials said.
Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, ended up arrested Wednesday by the FBI at his Niskayuna home.
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Zheng removed electronic files with company trade secrets involving its turbine technologies and hid data files in a digital photograph of a sunset, said officials at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said he then emailed the picture to his email account.
FBI agents took Zheng away in handcuffs earlier Wednesday at his home in Niskayuna. Zheng was hired by GE in 2008.
GE is one of the area’s largest employers with about 7,000 people, including 4,000 employees in Schenectady.
GE Global Research, GE Ventures, GE Power Generation and GE Healthcare also have local presences. GE has a factory in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Technology Park that makes x-ray machines, which will be part of the spinoff.