On September 29th, 2015, Judge White of a California federal district court accepted Christina Liew’s plea agreement, sentencing her to three years of probation and restitution to the IRS in the amount of $6 million. As part of the plea agreement, Ms. Liew pled guilty to conspiracy to tampering with evidence. Her Husband, Walter Liew, was the first person to be convicted of economic espionage by a U.S. jury in March 2014 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Walter Liew was found guilty of economic espionage and trade secret theft after selling DuPont’s coveted titanium dioxide (TiO2) recipe to Chinese state-owned entities. The highly guarded DuPont recipe was used for both the Oreo cream recipe, as well as the manufacturing of paper and plastics.