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ITMG Insider Threat Cases – March 5, 2022

Former GE Engineer Headed to Federal Trial in Trade Secret Theft Case

His name was Xiaoqing Zheng, the agents learned, and in 2012 he had been chosen for the Thousand Talents Program, a Chinese government program designed to recruit talented researchers to bring their skills to China.

Except in this case, Zheng’s skills were already employed at General Electric in Schenectady, close to the home in Niskayuna where Zheng and his wife, Hui Jin, have raised three children. The Cincinnati agents, working an unrelated case, notified GE security and fellow agents in Albany, setting the stage for an investigation into Zheng and his arrest in 2018.

GSK Accuses Former Employee of Trade Secret Theft

GlaxoSmithKline has obtained a temporary restraining order against former Rockville, US, employee Denise Brooks, whom the company accuses of stealing confidential information before her resignation on 13 January.

The company says Brooks arranged to swap her company laptop for a new one, while separately tendering her immediate resignation. This allowed her to collect the new laptop, with access to confidential files and emails, while returning her remaining company property. GSK also alleges Brooks emailed confidential material to a personal address and downloaded documents to multiple external storage devices.

Trade Secrets Lawsuit Names Ex-Ehrlich Chief of Staff, St. Mary’s County Judge, Prosecutor

A wide-ranging lawsuit alleging embezzlement and theft of trade secrets from an Annapolis-based eCommerce company makes claims against several prominent Marylanders, including the chief judge of St. Mary’s County Orphans’ Court, a deputy state’s attorney in the county, and a former chief of staff to Gov. Robert Ehrlich.

It also accuses two brothers of Compass Marketing’s executive chairman, John White, of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars through a series of secretive financial maneuvers.

Nurse and Marine Charged Over Fake Vaccination Card Scheme

An indictment unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday alleges that 26-year-old Jia Liu of Queens, New York, and 27-year-old nurse Steven Rodriguez of Long Beach, were involved in a scheme to steal blank cards, populate them with false coronavirus immunization data and sell them to unvaccinated people.

Liu and Rodriguez are accused of distributing at least 300 stolen or false COVID-19 vaccination cards and creating more than 70 false entries in the state’s immunization databases between March 2021 and February 2022.

Essex County Man Admits Using Credit Cards Stolen from U.S. Mail to Attempt to Defraud Banks of Over $300,000

Hakir Brown, Jahad Salter, 25, and Dashaun Brown, 31, engaged USPS employees, including Khadijah Banks Oneal, 31, to steal credit cards from the mail in exchange for compensation. Once they obtained the stolen cards, Hakir Brown and his conspirators fraudulently posed as the accountholders of the stolen credit cards when calling the banks that issued the cards and used personal identifying information belonging to the accountholders to obtain or change information about the stolen credit cards. They then used the stolen credit cards to make purchases at retail stores in New Jersey and elsewhere, including New York and online, resulting in attempted losses of over $300,000.

Caldwell Woman Sentenced for Bank Fraud

According to court records, Melissa A. Castellanos, 52, of Caldwell, worked as a financial specialist and office Manager at Aspire Human Services in Idaho. Her duties included overseeing the Social Security Administration payee accounts for residents of Aspire’s intermediate care facilities. The intermediate care facilities provided residential and vocational services to developmentally delayed, intellectually challenged or disabled adults. From at least July 2015 through August 2017, Castellanos executed a scheme to defraud that included preparing and cashing checks for fraudulent purchases on residents’ accounts. Castellanos wrote inaccurate descriptions in the memo lines of the checks to help conceal her actions. After preparing and signing the checks for fraudulent purchases, Castellanos cashed the checks. In violation of company policy, Castellanos went to the bank alone, instead of bringing the residents whose money she was taking. Castellanos kept the cash and did not provide it to the residents or use it to purchase the goods identified in the memo lines.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 5th, 2022 at 11:04 pm. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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