– Arrested in Canada –
Su was initially arrested in Canada in July 2014 on a warrant based on a US request. He waived extradition and was sent to the United States in February 2016.
Su Bin, also known as Stephen Su and Stephen Subin, was a China-based businessman in the aviation and aerospace fields.
According to prosecutors, Su would e-mail the co-conspirators pictures and other documents, with guidance regarding what persons, companies and technologies to target for hacking.
After the data was stolen, Su translated the information from English into Chinese.
Su and his co-conspirators each wrote, revised and emailed reports about the information and technology they had acquired “to the final beneficiaries of their hacking activities,” the Justice Department said.
Sentencing was set for July 13. Su faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain from the offense.
Last September, Obama and Xi addressed the issue of cybertheft at their Washington meeting, and both leaders agreed it was unacceptable.
Obama said after the talks that “we’ve agreed that neither the US or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property.”
Xi said “China strongly opposes and combats the theft of commercial secrets and other kinds of hacking attacks.”
Analysts have been cautious, warning that it remained to be seen if Beijing would live up to its agreement to crack down on hacking.
One report by a cybersecurity firm said hackers linked to the Chinese government kept up efforts to break into US computer networks shortly after the cybersecurity agreement.
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