Sarine Tech discovered attempted theft of its intellectual property;
2 suspects arrested
Sunday, July 23, 2017
By Lynette Khoo – lynkhoo@sph.com.sg.
SARINE Technology said it has discovered attempted theft of its intellectual property and two suspects of Indian nationality have been arrested in Tel Aviv on suspicion of doing so.
A third suspect, who is known to be in Israel, remains at large and is being sought by the Tel Aviv police for questioning.
Sarine Technologies CEO David Block said that Sarine will aggressively defend its intellectual property “in all places and at all times, with all the means that are necessary and appropriate”.
“Unfortunately, this is another example of how far and how low unethical players will go to attain our technology illegally,” Mr Block said in a release on Sunday.
The incident first took place a couple of months ago when Sarine employees reported to their management that they had been approached by a third party offering to buy key intellectual property pertaining to Sarine’s diamond manufacturing products.
Sarine then engaged the services of a private investigator who, posing as a Sarine employee, continued to correspond with the said third party.
An initial meeting took place in Tel Aviv in June between the private investigator and two Indian nationals. The terms of the proposed deal were agreed upon and a second meeting was set up in Tel Aviv last week.
During this meeting, the suspect and a relative, who is the owner of a company dealing in rough diamonds, handed over US$100,000 in cash, as advance payment against an agreed US$1 million to be paid in exchange for Sarine’s GalaxyTM system schematics, list of parts, vendors and software source code.
Immediately after the exchange, Israeli police detectives arrested the suspects and took them into custody. The suspects were brought before the Magistrate’s Court in Tel Aviv and the primary suspect was remanded into custody for six days pending further investigation.
But the suspect’s relative was released as the court accepted, at face value, his claim that he was not aware of the terms of the proposed deal. A third suspect, who had attended the initial meeting in June, and is known to be in Israel, remains at large.