Image from Bill Oxford via Unsplash
A former director of medical and scientific affairs at Merck (NYSE:MRK) faces criminal charges in federal court in New Jersey for allegedly stealing and transmitting trade secrets.
Shafat A. Quadri has been released on $100,000 unsecured bond. He was most recently employed at AstraZeneca (NSDQ:AZN).
The single count of trade secret theft carries a maximum potential penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a fine as high as $250,000, or double the total financial gain or loss, according to Rachael A. Honig, acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.
The complaint describes Quadri’s former employer as “Company 1,” stating that the organization reached out to the FBI in Oct. 2019 to report suspicious activity regarding its sensitive intellectual property. Quadri had been employed at that company until Sept. 30, 2019.
The suit alleges that Quadri used his email account to send at least 12 sensitive documents to private email accounts. Some of those documents pertained to an immunotherapy drug.
Company 1 used a network data loss prevention tool to identify 106 documents that Quadri allegedly sent to private email addresses. Some of the documents were outside of Quadri’s area of specialty at the company.