Federal prosecutors in New York have boosted charges against an ex-IBM Corp. software developer, charging him with economic espionage, according to AP. They now say Xu Jiaqiang (shoo jee-ah-chahng) stole computer code to benefit the National Health and Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China. The new allegations were contained in a rewritten indictment announced Tuesday. Xu was first arrested last December in White Plains on a theft-of-trade-secrets charge and pleaded not guilty. He will be arraigned Thursday on the new charges. The indictment accuses Xu of stealing and converting the company's source code for a piece of proprietary software for his own use. It says he then planned to use it to help the Chinese agency between November 2014 and last December.
