MORRISTOWN (AP) — A high-performing, Chinese-born chemical engineer began work at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport in September 2017 as the alleged linchpin in a broader industrial-espionage scheme devised to steal tens of millions of dollars worth of trade secrets, proprietary information she planned to use to jump-start a competing business in China, according to federal court documents.

Xiorang “Shannon” You, a naturalized U.S. citizen, allegedly conspired with a Chinese engineer to hijack $119.6 million worth of trade-secret information, according to an indictment drafted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy C. Harker and Matthew W. Walczewski, a prosecutor with the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C.

The case against You and the Chinese engineer, Liu Xiangchen, who remains in China, involves a relatively obscure sector of the economy, yet one that accounts for an estimated $3 billion in annual worldwide economic activity — polymer coatings sprayed inside metal drink and food cans that minimize flavor loss and prevent the container from corroding or reacting with the contents.

This federal prosecution centers on an entirely uncommon substance, but it has elements in common with higher-profile espionage cases: an alleged double agent; alleged state-sponsored theft; fevered, eleventh-hour computer downloads; and a potential financial impact large enough to buoy or blow holes in the economies of four countries.

And while the alleged $119.6 million theft is a haul, according to the FBI, it’s just an ice cube perched on the tip of an iceberg. The FBI estimates the annual economic loss to China through the theft of trade secrets, pirated computer software and counterfeit goods ranges from $225 billion to $600 billion.

As a yardstick, Tennessee state government’s entire spending plan for this fiscal year is $38.5 billion. This year’s U.S. military budget approximates $716 billion.

You allegedly stole trade secrets from Eastman that represent $13 million in research-and-development costs. The remaining $106.6 million in alleged intellectual-property theft occurred at You’s prior employer, the Coca-Cola Corporation in Atlanta, according to William Leckrone, a Knoxville-based FBI agent who testified at You’s detention hearing.

Federal prosecutors do not allege You stole from Coca-Cola directly. They maintain You plundered trade secrets belonging to six chemical companies that entrusted Coca-Cola with their proprietary can-coatings formulations, according to Leckrone.

The chemical companies and their reported research-and-development setbacks are: PPG Industries, $39 million; Sherwin-Williams Valspar, $30 million; Dow Chemical, $25 million; and AkzoNobel, a Dutch company, $7.3 million. The combined research-and-development losses at BASF and Toyochem, a Japanese firm, are $5.3 million, according to the FBI agent.

The federal government believes that You transferred the proprietary information to Xiangchen.

When U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents questioned You in September 2018 after she returned to the United States from China — three months after she lost her job at Eastman — she was carrying the trade-secret information from all seven companies, but that’s just one facet of the government’s proof, according to Leckrone.

The FBI agent testified that while You was still employed at Eastman, she was receiving a full-time, $7,000-a-month salary from Xiangchen’s company, Weihai Jinhong Polymer Company. The FBI has the employment contract. Text messages recovered from You’s phone provide a detailed roadmap of You’s dealings with Xiangchen, according to Leckrone.

Also, in the weeks before You was arrested on Feb. 12 in Lansing, Mich., she was shopping for an apartment in an exclusive beachfront high-rise in Weihai, China, a city of 2.8 million inhabitants located about 250 miles across the Yellow Sea from the Koreas. Prosecutors interpret the apartment search as an indication You wasn’t long for the United States.

What makes You’s prosecution more intriguing is that she received 13 million Chinese yuan, about $1.86 million, in grant-like awards from the Chinese national government and the Shandong provincial government.

While employed at Eastman, You won the Thousand Talents Program grant and the Yishi-Yiri award by using the stolen trade secrets “as the basis for (her) application,” according to the indictment. Eastman was unaware of the awards.

Part of the award money is earmarked for startup costs. The rest goes to the prize winner.

It appears You would have pocketed about $715,000. Leckrone testified You was in line to receive one million yuan a year for four years, about $572,000, for the Yishi-Yiri award. Thousand Talent winners normally receive about one million yuan.

However the bounty was divvied, the return on the investment for the national and provincial governments could have been enormous.

Acquiring $119.6 million worth of proprietary technology for $1.86 million is the equivalent of buying a $1 million house for $15,625, and Harker suggested the actual value of the coatings formulations could be several times the research-and-development costs.

A federal grand jury in Greeneville indicted You, 56, and Xiangchen, 61, for conspiracy to steal trade secrets, seven counts of stealing trade secrets and a single count of wire fraud. If convicted of the lot, she faces a federal prison sentence that ranges between 210 and 262 months.

Federal inmates must serve 85 percent of their sentences before they’re eligible for supervised release. A bottom-of-the-range sentence would mean You would be approaching 71 years old when she’s set free.

Xiangchen would be around 76 years old, but he has nothing to worry about from the U.S. attorney’s office as long as he stays in China or in countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the United States. The U.S. and China do not have an extradition treaty.

By any professional measure — in the field of metal-can coatings — You is a star among street lamps. But when it came to the way she allegedly plotted to plunder Eastman and Coca-Cola’s partners — and the way she allegedly belittled and otherwise mistreated coworkers and alleged coconspirators — she was a difficult employee, according to the FBI agent.

You was in her late 20s in 1992 when she began work in the United States. Seven years later, she renounced her Chinese citizenship and became a U.S. citizen around the time she earned a doctorate from the Emulsion Polymers Institute at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, according to court documents.

You’s upward professional trajectory reached a milestone when she landed the job as principal engineer for global research at Coca-Cola in 2012, which was one of the best years ever to be a leading polymer engineer.

In 2011, France banned the use of bisphenol-A — a synthetic compound that had been a standard in the coatings industry for more than 50 years — after research suggested that even low-dose exposure was linked to cardiovascular problems, including coronary artery disease, heart attack, hypertension and angina. California followed France’s lead on BPA shortly thereafter.

At the time, BPA was also a common component of coatings for plastics. In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the use of BPA in the manufacture of baby bottles and “sippy cups” after further research indicated BPA could mimic the effect of estrogen, the primary female sex hormone.

Apart from the fact that micro-dosing infants and children with an estrogen biosimilar never sounded like a good idea, the industry-wide stampede away from BPA had begun, and You was at the center of the BPA-free universe.

The six chemical companies that You allegedly compromised had agreements with Coca-Cola to share their BPA-free trade secrets to advance research and development in the field, according to Leckrone.

“The entire industry (was) interested in coming up with the best can coating product they (could) develop … They wanted it and they needed it,” Leckrone testified.

Access to the six companies’ trade secrets was on a strict, need-to-know basis. You had access to everything, and she was the only point of contact for more than one company, according to Leckrone.

In March 2017, Xiangchen allegedly first approached You about stealing the BPA-free trade secrets. Xiangchen sweetened the pot with the enticement that if You were successful, Weihai Jinhong would sponsor her application for the Thousand Talents and Yishi-Yiri awards, according to the indictment.

At some point, Coca-Cola managers decided to eliminate You’s research division, which ceased operations on Aug. 31, 2017. Toward the latter part of You’s employment in Atlanta, the timeline the FBI advances becomes critical.

On Aug. 10, Coca-Cola paid You $33,912 to sign a document affirming she had not retained any trade secrets. Coca-Cola provided You with a hard drive to which she was supposed to download the proprietary information. When You returned the hard drive, it was blank, according to Leckrone.

Ten days later she traveled to China to defend her application to the Yishi-Yiri award program.

On Aug. 29, shortly after 11 p.m. — two days before You’s employment in Atlanta ended — Coca-Cola computer logs show the files containing the six chemical companies’ trade secrets were moved, but they do not show the destination.

Coca-Cola security software could not block the file transfer. The chemical companies’ proprietary information would later be found on You’s Eastman-supplied laptop in Kingsport, Lekrone testified.

Coca-Cola computer forensic security staff may have strongly suspected You had stolen the files, but they couldn’t prove it. For the time being, You was in the wind, allegedly with $106.6 million worth of trade secrets.

Seventeen days after You started work at Eastman on Sept. 1, 2017, she traveled to China for four days — with Xiangchen’s assistance — to defend her application to the Thousand Talents award.

You’s relationships with Eastman employees were deeply flawed from the outset and they never improved significantly before she was fired in June 2018, according to the FBI.

“One manager described her as a ‘nightmare,’” Leckrone testified. “Others described her as unwilling to work on the product that they wanted, that she continually worked on products that Eastman wasn’t attempting to develop; that she was reluctant to go to the lab space …”

You, whose title was packaging application development manager, let it slip to coworkers that she owned homes in Boston, Atlanta and Shanghai, and that she planned to put the United States behind her and retire to a comfortable life in China. At one point, she told a supervisor that she didn’t need her salary, and she accepted the Eastman job as a favor to the company, according to the FBI agent.

The beginning of the end for You at Eastman dawned on April 27, 2018 when she left for what was supposed to be an eight-day trip to China to meet with Eastman officials in Shanghai “to assist them in developing their image.”

“As she put it, she was famous in the industry, and that she needed to go to China for this trip,” the FBI agent testified.