A Canadian scientist pleaded guilty to economic espionage and theft for sending U.S. trade secrets on a pesticide and a new food product to China and Germany, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.


Kexue Huang, 46, entered the pleas in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis. He faces a possible maximum prison sentence of 25 years.

Chinese-born Huang was indicted in June 2010 and charged under the Economic Espionage Act, which was passed in 1996 after the U.S. determined other countries were spying on private businesses. His was the eighth case nationwide under the 15-year-old law.

Huang from 2007 to 2010 delivered trade secrets on an organic pesticide he helped develop at Dow AgroSciences in Indiana to persons in Germany and China and used the stolen materials to conduct unauthorized research with the intent to help foreign universities linked to China, the Justice Department said in a news release.

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