Industrial Espionage in Fuel Cell Research – A Case of the Kurtz Commercial Investigation Agency Stuttgart, Germany

Häberle is the founder and owner of a medium-sized Swabian company that focuses heavily on fuel cell technology research and development. “A fiercely competitive field,” he explains to our Stuttgart investigators, “fuel cells are considered THE energy converters of the future!” The technology has tremendous advantages, especially in automotive engineering – not unimportant in a region where many of the country’s car manufacturers and suppliers are based.

Innovative companies like Häberle’s, focused on research and development, rely on bringing new technologies to market first – an essential factor for their economic success. The competition is fierce, and moral boundaries appear flexible. Company secrets had been spied on and passed to a competitor. At first, the case seemed straightforward: unsurprisingly, the spy was caught, Häberle says, “He actually has my full trust – though he’s still quite new here …” The employee in question (25) was the son of a personal friend and university colleague, and Häberle had trusted him on that basis alone. The young man, employed only six months, had apparently passed key internal data and research results to a competitor. What was lacking, however, were court-admissible proofs and clarification of certain inconsistencies – both of which the Kurtz Commercial Investigation Agency Stuttgart was tasked with addressing.

During the work of the IT forensic specialists of the Kurtz Commercial Investigation Agency Stuttgart, more and more indications began to surface, pointing the case in an entirely new direction: The employee concerned was verifiably absent from the company on at least three occasions during the times when data transfers had taken place. Moreover, the IMEI number in question did not match either his work or private smartphone, as further examinations showed. Now, a new possibility came into focus for our Stuttgart corporate investigators – one that Häberle had not even considered: The suspicion, the commercial investigators reasoned, might have been deliberately directed toward the new employee in order to divert attention and mislead the investigation in case the theft was discovered. The access to other workstations and computer data – originally carried out merely as a cover – quickly yielded a new clue through the regularly connected devices: The smartphone to which the data had been transferred was assigned to an entirely different employee who worked in the neighbouring office! This employee, Mr B. Konrad, had been with the company from the very beginning, and it was now on him that the detectives of the Kurtz Commercial Investigation Agency Stuttgart focused their investigation.

With these new insights, the surveillance of the new target person could begin – and it soon produced results: Konrad, still unaware that he was under investigation and feeling safe, was in regular contact with a nearby company that was also engaged in fuel cell research. Fortunately, the meetings took place outside the premises of either company – otherwise, our commercial investigators would have been limited by privacy protections, which extend to company premises as well. However, under these circumstances, surveillance quickly revealed that Konrad regularly exchanged envelopes with a person later identified as a senior executive of that same company, which was in direct competition with the client of our Stuttgart commercial investigators. Three such meetings were observed and photographically documented by our corporate detectives – all in different locations but uninterruptedly followed.

The malicious idea not only to cover his tracks but also to leave misleading traces pointing to someone else had been entirely Konrad’s own. He showed no remorse for the fact that the young man who had initially come under suspicion had done absolutely nothing wrong and had thus stood unjustly in the focus of the investigation. Fortunately for Häberle and his company, Konrad’s actions did not go undetected thanks to the commercial investigators and IT forensic specialists of the Kurtz Detective Agency Stuttgart. Sufficient court-admissible evidence could be gathered to make both Konrad and the aforementioned employee of the competing company subject to criminal investigation.