In March, the FBI’s Chicago field office arrested a 52-year-old former employee of Valspar Corp, and charged him with theft of company secrets. The former employee, David Yen Lee of Arlington Heights, Ill., faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Valspar was tipped off to the theft after Lee allegedly resigned abruptly from his job two weeks after returning from a business trip in China. The company discovered suspicious activity on Lee’s laptop, such as recently deleted records as well as a hidden file that contained a number of unauthorized programs, according to the Minneapolis Business Journal.

According to the complaint against him, Lee accepted a job at Nippon Paint Co., one of Valspar’s competitors.