MAN CHARGED IN SEED CORN THEFT MUST PAY $425,000 RESTITUTION; Associated Press, 12/22/16

David Pitt, Associated Press; MAN CHARGED IN SEED CORN THEFT MUST PAY $425,000 RESTITUTION:

"A federal judge said this week that a naturalized U.S. citizen from China who pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to steal seed corn must pay the U.S. companies that made the seed $425,000.

Mo Hailong, 47, was living in Florida when he was arrested in December 2013. In his plea agreement with federal prosecutors in January, he admitted to being part of a conspiracy to send stolen DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto seed corn from fields in Iowa and Illinois to China, where scientists planned to reverse engineer it to reproduce its genetic traits...

The investigation began when DuPont Pioneer security staff in Iowa detected suspicious activity, including men crawling around in cornfields. The FBI planted GPS monitors on rental cars and tapped cellphones of some of the men."