A businessman from China will serve three years in prison after being caught rummaging through Iowa cornfields to learn trade secrets from U.S. seed corn companies. The Des Moines Register reports the man known as Robert Mo was taking seed from the Midwest and shipping it to China. He was found by DuPont Pioneer security guards in 2011 digging in a corn field where test plots of new seed corn varieties were growing. He was arrested in 2013, but five other coworkers fled the U.S. before they could be arrested. Prosecutors say he traveled the Midwest working for Kings Nower Seed, a subsidiary of a technology conglomerate in China, to take corn seed and ship it to China so scientists could attempt to reproduce its genetic traits. He pled guilty in January and was sentenced to three years in prison this week.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting news service.