A 41-year-old ex-Motorola software engineer accused of stealing trade secrets for her native country, China, is currently on trial and is looking at 15 years in prison if she is convicted of economic espionage.

Hanjuan Jin, a naturalized United States citizen, has been accused of stealing mobile telecommunications technology from Motorola for Beijing business, Kai Sun News Technology Co., also known as SunKaisens, and for China's military, according to Bloomberg.

Jin has waived her right to a jury and is being tried by U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo in Chicago, Ill. She faces three Chinese-military-related charges and is looking at 15 years in prison, according to the Bloomberg report.

During his openings statement on Tuesday, prosecutor Christopher Stetler told the court of how Jin was stopped on Feb. 28, 2007, as she boarded a flight at O'Hare International Airport.

U.S. customs agents at the Chicago airport stopped Jin while she was allegedly carrying 1,000 company documents, $30,000 and a one-way ticket to China, committing economic espionage for China, Bloomberg reported that federal prosecutor told the trial judge.

The defendant has a job waiting for her, a job in China with a company that provides cellular technology to the Chinese military, Stetler said.

Defense lawyer Beth Westman Gaus told the judge that none of the documents that the prosecutor's case relies on contain secrets valuable to Motorola. She allegedly stole secrets pertaining to iDEN push-to-talk technology.

It was a developmental dead-end, Gaus said of the company's iDEN technology as reported by Bloomberg. It was obsolete.

Read the full report from Bloomberg here.

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