Two co-founders of a biopharmaceutical startup will spend a year in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to steal trade secrets from one of the Bay Area's biggest biotech companies and defraud investors of more than $101 million.
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Racho Jordanov, a 74-year-old Rancho Santa Fe resident, and Rose Lin, a 73-year-old living in South San Francisco, were sentenced on Tuesday in a San Francisco federal courtroom after each pleaded guilty last August to conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and wire fraud.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup sentenced the pair to a year and one day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Jordanov will spend nine months of supervised release in home confinement, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Northern California announced on Tuesday.
Jordanov and Lin admitted to taking confidential, proprietary and trade secret information from Genentech between 2011 and 2019, which they then used to solicit about $101 million in investment from French pharmaceutical company Sanofi S.A. The duo started JHL Biotech in Taiwan, and the company hired former Genentech employees who provided confidential and proprietary documents.
JHL Biotech used the "intellectual property and scientific know-how taken from Genentech" to more quickly and cheaply develop biosimilar drugs to Genentech's own. Lin covertly hired a principal scientist from Genentech so work as JHL's head of formulation while he still worked for the South San Francisco-headquartered company.
Last June, a federal grand jury indicted Jordanov and Lin on conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and wire fraud, wire fraud, international money laundering and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Jordanov, who was also charged with two counts of theft of trade secrets, and Lin, who was also charged with making false statements to a federal agency, pleaded guilty last August to one conspiracy charge and had the rest of their charges dismissed on Tuesday.
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