According to the press in Canada and the United States, this is the Canadian company Hibar Systems, which specializes in assembly lines for electric vehicles, which was acquired by Tesla, led by billionaire Elon Musk, in 2019.
Klaus Pfluegel, also a German citizen, pleaded guilty, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement Thursday.
The decision allows Pflugbeil to avoid criminal prosecution. The 58-year-old man is scheduled to be sentenced on October 9 in the federal court in Central Islip, near New York.
Klaus Pfluegel and Xiao Yilong, the alleged accomplice currently on the run, were contacted at the end of 2023 by US Federal Police (FBI) agents posing as industrialists interested in purchasing their products.
The two men are accused of stealing industrial and trade secrets from Hepar Systems, including “original documents and drawings” about the technology of the company where they worked.
According to the statement, Pflugbeil left the Canadian manufacturer in 2020 to join a company founded by Shao Yilong in China, which manufactures and markets the same equipment whose technology was “stolen from her former employer.”
Federal Prosecutor Breon Pace said his guilty plea “demonstrates that this indictment quickly brings to justice those who misappropriate the intellectual property of American companies and protects our economy and national security.”
