DuPont scientist makes off with $400m in secrets from DuPont, caught shredding, burning docs and wiping hard drive during raid. You can file this one away in the “Worst Case Scenarios” folder. Federal authorities are charging a former research chemist at DuPont with absconding with an estimated $400 million in trade secrets from the company. According to this report,at Delaware Online, Gary Min, 43, plead guilty today to stealing trade secrets in November and faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Colm Connolly, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, unsealed the case today. Min is a former Chinese national who worked for DuPont for 10 years before jumping ship in October, 2005, to a competitor, Victrex PLC, which is based in London and has operations in China. Unfortunately, Min declined to tell DuPont about his new job for two months — until December, 2005. In the meantime, Min developed a sudden and passionate interest in DuPont’s intellectual property: downloading 22,000 sensitive documents and viewing almost 17,000 more in teh company’s electronic library. That activity tipped off the company, which hired a private investigator to look into Min. That investigation turned up reams of sensitive DuPont documents stuffed in the trash at Min’s home. Around 180 sensitive documents were transferred to a Victrex laptop after Min left DuPont, the story says. A raid of Min’s home on Feb. 14, 2006 found him in the process of erasing data from his hard drive, and shredding DuPont technical documents and burning others in the fireplace. Ooops! Security