CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - A judge has sentenced a former DuPont manager to 3 ½ years in prison for stealing valuable trade secrets about its ethanol fuel business and giving them to a competitor who hired him.
U.S. District Judge Linda Reade ordered 55-year-old Josh Isler of St. Ansgar, Iowa, to spend 42 months in federal prison. Isler pleaded guilty last summer to stealing trade secrets and making false statements to the FBI.
After he was hired by a competitor but remained employed at DuPont in 2013, Isler downloaded and shared internal DuPont files related to enzymes it supplies to ethanol plants to produce fuel. Isler has said that he did so to impress his new employer and secure his job, which came with a salary increase and car.
The files included test, yield, and pricing information for products and customers of DuPont.
The government argued that DuPont lost millions of dollars in sales after the theft and that Isler’s actions were at least partly to blame.
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