Japanscam

Hitachi pleads guilty

Last June, Hitachi Senior Engineer Kenji Hayashi and two colleagues walked into the Santa Clara offices of Glenmar Associates, purportedly a California consulting firm, to collect IBM documents giving crucial details of the company's newest computer technology. Hitachi had made payments totaling $622,000 to get the information. To Hayashi's surprise, he was confronted by a gaggle of FBI agents, who had set an Abscam-like trap to catch Hayashi and his friends.

In a federal court in San Francisco last week, Hitachi pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport stolen IBM secrets to Japan. The company was fined $10,000, Hayashi $10,000 and another employee $4,000. The $24,000 in fines struck some observers as a bit light. Conceding that the costs of setting up the Japanscam were far greater than that, Assistant U.S. Attorney Herbert Hoffman added: "But then we don't run criminal investigations on a cost-effective basis. Justice has been accomplished." Also, Hitachi is out of pocket considerably more than $24,000. The $622,000 that Hitachi paid Glenmar, an FBI front, is still in the U.S. Treasury. Federal authorities say they have no intention of returning it. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.