Who says random airport searches don’t work? United States customs officials discovered that Hanjuan Jin, 37, a China-born U.S. citizen, was allegedly trying to leak confidential trade secrets from her former U.S. employer to a China-based rival when they searched her luggage at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, according to a press release by the FBI. She was attempting to take a one-way flight to Beijing when she was caught.

Authorities discovered Jin was carrying about $30,000 in cash as well as over 1,000 confidential electronic and paper proprietary documents, all belonging to her former employer, known only in federal documents as “Company A.” According to the indictment against her, Jin was storing the information on a laptop, various hard drives, a thumb drive and a number of data CDs when her luggage was searched.

“We have to be vigilant in preserving the integrity of trade secrets to provide an honest playing field among business competitors, whether foreign or domestic. Trade secrets often are a business’s most valuable assets, and protecting them from theft and betrayal is a high priority for law enforcement,” Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in a statement released on Wednesday.

While an official release from the Department of Justice claims that Company A spent “hundreds of millions of dollars on research and development for the proprietary information” that Jin had in her possession, reports by the Chicago Tribune and Information Week both put that price tag at $600 million. If convicted, Jin faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each charge.