The Great Corn Caper
In 2011, FBI agents were concluding a routine liaison visit with officials at DuPont Pioneer's offices near Des Moines, Iowa when one of the agents asked if company officials had any unusual activity recently. Specifically, they were looking for anything that may involve targeting the company's intellectual property (IP). The company official subsequently detailed a recent incident where an Asian male had been found digging in one of their grower fields. Grower fields operate like laboratories where companies can test their products. This happenstance piece of information from a routine public/private sector outreach meeting would eventually lead agents on cat-and-mouse surveillance operations across the Midwest. It took them on a deep dive into the biotechnology of proprietary corn breeding. The case was dubbed "Operation Purple Maze," which was a successful Economic Espionage/Theft of Trade Secrets cases involving the theft of bio-engineered corn seed. Omaha FBI SA Militello will discuss the liaison between the FBI and private industry and their techniques and processes related to suspected IP theft investigations.
Presented by:
Special Agent, Byron Militello, Omaha FBI Field Office, Des Moines Resident Agency