Court:

A former Boeing employee at the Huntington Beach plant was convicted of economic espionage and acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China last week.

In his 30 years as a spy, Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 73, leaked sensitive aerospace and military information to the People’s Republic of China, which he proudly called his “motherland,” according to U.S. District Court documentation. The Orange resident faces a fine of $3.75 million and a maximum of 110 years in jail. Chung, a native of China and naturalized U.S. citizen, worked at the Huntington Beach plant for several years, mostly as a stress analyst on the forward fuselage section of the space shuttle.

“The cost of Mr. Chung’s traitorous actions to American security and the economy cannot be quantified, but have now been exposed, and his ability to exploit critical technology has come to an end,” said Salvador Hernandez, assistant director of the FBI in Los Angeles, in a release from the Department of Justice. “... I’m confident this milestone conviction will serve as a deterrent to would-be spies contemplating theft of precious U.S. secrets.”

United States District Judge Cormac J. Carney found Chung guilty of six counts of economic espionage to benefit a foreign country, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, one count of acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China and one count of making false statements to the FBI.

“Boeing cooperated fully with the government in its investigation and shares the government’s interest in preventing the theft and misuse of its proprietary data,” said Dan Beck, a spokesman for Boeing. “The court’s decision today reflects the hard work of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in this case.”

When investigators searched Chung’s house Sept. 11, 2006, they discovered more than 250,000 pages of documents from Boeing and other defense contractors inside and underneath his home.

Federal agents first suspected Chung’s activities during a 2005 investigation of another engineer, Chi Mak, who was convicted in 2007 of spy activity. The two had kept in “significant contact” with each other, court documentation noted. Over the years, Chung corresponded with individuals from the Chinese aviation industry, which solicited his cooperation as early as 1979.

Chung began his lifelong career in engineering with Boeing as a helicopter stress analyst some time before 1969, according to court documents. It wasn’t until 1999 that Chung moved to the Huntington Beach plant, from which he was laid off for a brief period between September 2002 and early 2003. In 2003, he returned to Boeing as a contractor to assist with the evaluation of the space shuttle Columbia’s crash.

Chung traveled to China frequently between 2001 and 2003, during his time at Huntington Beach, as evidenced by journals and proprietary briefings found at his home. These record his travels to China to share aerospace technology, noted court documentation. In 2000, he accepted a dinner invitation from China Consul Wu Hui Jun, with whom he kept in close contact. In 2001, he attended a party at the consulate. He introduced space shuttle details at Peking University in April 2001, noted court documentation.

“Mr. Chung has no plausible explanation for misappropriating, cataloging, passing and selectively destroying documents,” noted court findings. “The suggestion that Mr. Chung was doing so because he was a ‘pack rat’ is ludicrous. Mr. Chung did so because he was a spy.”

NASA and the FBI collaborated to conduct the investigation.

Carney remanded Chung into custody, where he will remain until his Nov. 9 sentencing.