The documents, stolen from GM, included hybrid technology secrets and are estimated to the valued at $40 million.

Former car giant General Motors (GM) engineer and her husband were charged in a Detroit court with a conspiracy to steal secrets relating to the company’s hybrid technology and selling them to a Chinese car manufacturer. According to charges, between May 2006 and December 2003 Shannon Doe, 51, and her husband Hugh Kane, 49, stole secrets from GM. In January 2005, Doe received a compensation package from GM, after leaving the company, and five days later copied thousands of pages of confidential documents onto a hard disk belonging to a company she founded with her husband, Millennium Technology International. Doe later tried to sell the hybrid technology to Cherry automobile, a Chinese car manufacturer.

The couple is charged with conspiracy to obtain trade secrets without authorization, possession of trade secrets and electronic fraud. Kane is also charged with destroying evidence. GM estimates that the documents stolen from the company are valued at more than $ 40 million.

“At a time when the automotive industry is finding new areas of innovation, such as hybrid technology, we will not tolerate theft of trade secrets by our foreign competitors” said Barbara Quaid, the Federal Prosecutor of the eastern district of Michigan.” We will aggressively prosecute those who steal from the investment of our automotive industry research and development. “