Lexington Couple, Company Indicted On Theft Of Trade Secrets

LEXINGTON, MA — A Lexington couple was indicted along with the company they founded, in connection with the theft of hundreds of files containing proprietary information from Analog Devices, Inc., a worldwide semiconductor company headquartered in Norwood.

Haoyang Yu, 41, of Lexington, and his company, Tricon MMIC LLC (Tricon), are facing several charges including possession and attempted possession of a trade secret, smuggling and transporting stolen goods. He and his wife, Yanzhi Chen, 22, also of Lexington, were also charged with wire fraud and aiding and abetting wire fraud.

Yu had been charged by indictment in June 2019 with stealing, copying, downloading, and possessing ADI’s trade secrets.

Yu was born in Harbin, China, and first came to the United States in 2002 through the student visa program. He became a lawful permanent resident in June 2009, and a naturalized U.S. citizen in March 2017. From July 2014 to July 2017, Yu worked for ADI as a principal design engineer.

Yu worked for ADI designing and developing parts used in radio, cellular and satellite communications, as well as in defense and aerospace applications. Yu had access to data and information relating to ADI’s present and future product designs, schematics, manufacturing files and testing procedures, according to the Department of Justice.

Yu is accused of downloading hundreds of highly confidential schematic design and modeling files that belonged to ADI, and uploading many of these files to his personal Google drive account. The files YU stole from ADI were worth millions of dollars.

In March 2017, about five months before he resigned from ADI, Yu and his wife established Tricon, which, according to its website, “specializes in wide band MMIC amplifiers,” and serves customers in “defense and aerospace, test and instrumentation, [and] satellite communications.”

On July 31, 2017, Yu resigned from ADI and signed an agreement affirming that he had surrendered all proprietary information or data, according to the DOJ. Then in December 2018 and again in June 2019, Yu had propriety ADI files in his possession both in his Google drive account and on his personal computers. Since creating Tricon in March 2017, Yu marketed and sold approximately 20 ADI designs as his own, and even used the same Taiwanese semiconductor fabrication plant as ADI to manufacture Tricon’s MMIC parts. The superseding indictment claim that the defendants fraudulently obtained MMIC and other semiconductor parts from the Taiwanese semiconductor fabrication plant by providing the plant with ADI’s stolen designs and other proprietary information, and furthermore concealed the fact that the designs were stolen from ADI.

Yu and Triconare also accused of smuggling export-controlled technology from the United States to Taiwan without obtaining the necessary export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The superseding indictment alleges that Yu committed visa fraud and procured U.S. citizenship unlawfully by failing to disclose material facts and information concerning the theft of ADI’s trade secrets in his Application for Naturalization (Form N-400), which he submitted to the U.S Department of Homeland Security in or about February 2017.

The charge of wire fraud provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. All other charges each provide for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.