On Wednesday, a former Motorola software engineer was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing Motorola trade secrets, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Jin Hanjuan, a Chinese-born American, was stopped by U.S. customs at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as she was traveling to China on a one-way ticket on Feb. 28, 2007. She was found to be secretly working for Sun Kaisens, a Chinese telecommunication technology company. Customs officials seized US$31,000 in cash and more than 1,000 Motorola documents she had on her as she tried to leave the country.

Jin, 41, worked as a software engineer for Motorola Inc. for nine years. According to evidence, Jin took a medical leave of absence in February 2006, during which she was hired by Sun Kaisens. Between November 2006 and February 2007, Jin went back to China to work on several projects for Sun Kaisens.

When Jin Hanjuan returned to Motorola in February 2007, she gained access to hundreds of Motorola's technical documents. On Feb. 27, Jin sent an email to her manager asking for a voluntary company layoff.

Prosecutors alleged that among the secrets she had on her, were the descriptions of a walkie-talkie type featured on Motorola cell phones that prosecutors claimed would have benefited the Chinese military.

Jin's defense lawyers say the naturalized U.S. citizen was never a spy for the Chinese company and took the files merely to refresh her knowledge after a long absence from work. In addition, her lawyers stated that that particular walkie-talkie feature would not be very useful to the Chinese military and is hardly advanced technology.

Following her five-day bench trial in November, Jin Hanjuan was convicted on three counts of theft of trade secrets in February. U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo found Jin not guilty on the three counts of economic espionage, but he did rule Jin was "willing to betray her naturalized country."

Jin, of Aurora, Ill., was fined US$20,000 and ordered to remain in electronically monitored house-confinement until the beginning her sentence on Oct. 25.

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