This doesn't do much good for US-China industry/scientific relations

A hilariously inept filching of IP, covered by Jeff Johnson in this week's C&EN (emphasis mine):

A Des Moines, Iowa, federal grand jury has indicted seven Chinese nationals for stealing hybrid corn seed technology from DuPont and Monsanto test fields in Iowa and Illinois. 

The indictment accuses the group of conspiring to steal and send back to China parent seed lines containing gene-modified and plant-bred traits such as resistance to disease, pests, and drought. All seven worked on behalf of Dabeinong Technology Group, a Beijing-based agricultural conglomerate founded in 1993. 

Among those arrested and indicted is Mo Yun, the wife of Dabeinong founder Shao Genhuo, says the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa. According to Forbes magazine, Shao has a net worth of $1.3 billion. The indictment accuses Mo of being the brains behind the operation. 

The FBI began tracking the group in May 2011 following an alert from DuPont. A company security guard, posted at a cornfield in Iowa, had reported observing Mo Hailong, Mo Yun’s brother and Dabeinong’s director of international business, on his knees digging up recently planted corn seed. 

The FBI subsequently tracked Mo Hailong and others over the next year and a half as the group collected corn seed and mature ears of parent corn from research fields operated by DuPont, Monsanto, and the seed company AgReliant Genetics. 

To get the seed back to China, the government says, one defendant tucked the stolen kernels into Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn boxes packed into his luggage. A second defendant traveling back to China tried to conceal the seed corn in Pop Weaver boxes. 

Each of the defendants faces a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of $250,000, according to a government spokesman.

Call me crazy, but I think a Iowa security guard might notice something was up when Chinese folks are digging up samples from research fields. I'd love to know how successful Dabeinong Technology Group is in China, and if this would have actually have represented a threat to DuPont.