Ex-Bristol-Myers Worker Pleads To Secrets Theft

A former Bristol-Myers Squibb employee pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing trade secrets from the drug manufacturer so he could set up his own business in India, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Shalin Jhaveri, 30, pleaded guilty to one count in a federal court in New York for the scheme and will face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He also agreed to be deported after any prison sentence imposed, the department said.

The FBI said earlier this year when Jhaveri was charged that he took more than 1,300 documents from the company starting in late 2009 and that he downloaded them to his laptop and portable hard drives over the course of several days.

The plea agreement was narrower, focusing on three documents he uploaded to an email account. He provided access to them to someone he thought was a potential investor who would back his venture in India, the document said.

Jhaveri had worked as a technical operations associate since November 2007, but was fired in February 2010 from the company's Syracuse facility, where it develops and manufactures biotechnology medicines for clinical and commercial use.

Bristol-Myers corporate security on Dec. 22, 2009 notified its in-house computer security experts that Jhaveri was taking confidential material. They learned days later he planned to start a biopharmaceutical business in India with his father, according to court papers when he was first charged.