Speaker 1: Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and
death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that
made them possible. Now, let's get started.
Speaker 2: Coca Cola's namesake syrup for his flagship's soft drink is
one of the most well known trade secrets in food manufacturing.
You're probably asking why am I talking about Coca Cola. Well,
spies aren't only about government and espionage between countries, or
attacks or sensitive national security information. Sometimes it can be
trade secrets, and the beverage giants' other secrets are apparently
a little bit more vulnerable than their biggest trade secret,
their names sake syrup. On April twenty second, the DOJ
said that a federal jury in Tennessee the DOJ's Department
of Justice Folks and Tennessee, convicted a Michigan woman of
conspiracy to steal trade secrets, economic espionage, and wire fraud
regarding Coke's formulas for its BPA free codings inside it's
beverage cans. She was originally indicted in February twenty nineteen.
According to court documents and evidence presented during her twelve
day trials, Shannon you stole the valuable formulation material while
working for the company in Atlanta. The stolen BPA trade
secrets belonged to major chemical and coding makers that include Ascode, Noble,
bs F, and Dow Chemical. It costs almost one hundred
and twenty million dollars to develop court finding show that
you stole the trade secrets to show set up a
new court finding showed that she stole those trade secrets
as I mentioned, to set up a new BPA free
coding company in China. U An, a Chinese corporate partner,
received millions of dollars in Chinese government grants to support
the new company, which ultimately planned to benefit that partner,
the governments of China, the Chinese province of Shandong, and
c Wayhey You was a principal engineer for global research
at Coca Cola for five years until August twenty seventeen,
and then a packaging application developer for Eastman Chemical until
twenty eighteen. The DOJ said. During that time, she was
one of a limited number of Coke and Eastman Chemical
employees with access to BPA free trade secrets belonging to
major suppliers. Until recently, BPA was used to coke the
inside of cans and other food and beverage containers to
help minimize flavor loss and prevent corrosion. But due to
its health risks, BPA has since been phasing out as
alternatives have been developed. The DOJ said witnesses when they
impacted chemical encoding companies in the trial testified they're developing
these BPA free alternatives. Was a very expensive and time
consuming process. So again you can see spies aren't only
relegated to national security issues, but huge economic security issues
can be implicated.