Man accused of providing company secrets to foreign competitor

CHARLOTTE — An Iredell County man is accused of stealing thousands of classified documents from a Department of Defense (DOD) contractor and manufacturer of ballistic armor, and then giving the information to a foreign competitor.

That’s according to a federal lawsuit filed in late February involving Integris Composites against a former employee.

Court records say a former vice president of sales at Integris left in September 2023 to work for Hesco Armor, but an employee at his new company caught him planning to use Integris’ documents to take customers away.

The former VP hasn’t been officially charged yet, so Channel 9 isn’t naming him.

Integris claims [Defendant] “Copied and removed at least 9,000 files from Integris’ computer systems in the two-week period preceding his resignation … including Proprietary information, [For Official Use Only] information, Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), and export-controlled information.”

According to the federal court documents, an employee at Hesco reached out to investigators and told them what was found.

“[Source] disclosed for the first time that he received Integris’ proprietary and confidential information pertaining to customers, pricing, and business strategies from [Defendant],” the lawsuit says. “[Source] subsequently contacted Integris and provided Integris copies of the ill-gotten and stolen proprietary and confidential information received from [Defendant].”

According to the lawsuit, the former Integris employee shared customer account information for at least 10 customers in military, law enforcement, and commercial body armor industries.

The lawsuit says the source claimed that the former VP was planning on using the information to help his job at Hesco.

“[Source] further disclosed that [defendant’s] expressly stated intent was to disclose and use Integris’ stolen proprietary and confidential information in an effort to take customers away from, and to compete directly with, Integris,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says that Hesco fired the defendant once the company learned about what he was doing with Integris’ documents.

Right now, the case is in civil court, but according to the lawsuit, the company is bound by laws and agreements with the Department of Defense.

“Integris’ facilities are beholden to laws, contract clauses, nondisclosure agreements, and other binding arrangements with the DOD, which govern the security of sensitive and confidential information,” according to the lawsuit.

The former VP could face possible criminal penalties, depending on what documents were taken and what was done with them, according to DOD policy.

On Monday the defendant was served a copy of the lawsuit in Charlotte.

The investigation into the totality of the alleged leak is still ongoing according to Integris and the company’s lawyers asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the man, claiming the information was still at risk.

The judge denied the TRO, instead setting a hearing for the two parties to present evidence on Monday; the outcome of that hearing is not yet known.

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