DoJ: Chinese National Jailed for Five Years for Selling IBM Secrets

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - A Chinese national and former employee of IBM received a five-year prison sentence for selling confidential information regarding the company's software, according to the US Department of Justice.

"Xu Jiaqiang, 31, formerly of Beijing, China, was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison, for economic espionage and theft of a trade secret in connection with Xu’s theft of proprietary source code from Xu’s former employer," the Department of Justice said in the indictment issued on Thursday.

The Justice Department explained Xu worked as a developer for IBM from November 2010 to May 2014 and had access to proprietary software and its underlying source codes he tried to sell abroad.

The defendant committed a crime aiming to benefit the government of China, the Justice Department noted.

Xu pleaded guilty to six counts with which he was charged in December, the Justice Department added.