Two California men are heading to the slammer for snatching aircraft design secrets. Juan Martinez, 53, of Brea, got hit with a 63-month sentence, while Joseph Pascua, 61, of Escondido is looking at 86 months behind bars, both convicted for conspiring to commit trade secret theft, a serious federal no-no, as detailed by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker also slapped these guys with a $1,000 fine each, and come release, they'll be on a tight leash with three years of supervised release. There's no parole in the federal game.“Ideas have value, especially when those ideas involve complex engineering designs such as those stolen by the participants in this conspiracy,” said U.S. Attorney Jill E. Steinberg.
Martinez, who was working as a contractor and a technical lead at an aeronautics company, teamed up with Pascua and other crafty conspirators to spirit away proprietary tech from a leading aircraft manufacturer for their sneaky benefits, according to trial evidence mentioned by the prosecution; their big idea was to peddle these stolen secrets to the market and boost themselves at their competitor's expense.
Two other members of their conspiracy, Craig German and Gilbert Basaldua, are already serving time for their roles in the theft. German is clocking a 70-month stint for the trade secret theft and also lied during his testimony, which got him an additional 20 months, and Basaldua got 80 months for his part in the caper, plus interstate transportation of stolen property.
FBI Atlanta's Supervisory Senior Resident Agent Will Clarke minced no words: “When companies invest huge amounts of time and money to develop technologies, only to have those technologies stolen, the results are devastating,”. The FBI led the investigation, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Darron J. Hubbard and Jenna G. Solari prosecuting the case.
