Tucson is a crossroads for many kinds of business enterprises — not always legal in nature.

But forget for a moment about the run-of-the-mill border drug trade or smuggling operations that use Tucson as a meetup site.

The Old Pueblo allegedly was the site of a corporate espionage conspiracy when three South Koreans conspired to steal trade secrets from Lubrizol Corp., an Ohio-based lubricant and industrial chemical company.

According to prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Ohio, one of the defendants, a Lubrizol employee, reserved a room at the Westin La Paloma Resort in 2004. The room, along with other locations, was used for meetings at which envelopes containing $10,000 in cash were passed as a payoff for trade secrets, prosecutors say. The defendant, Kyung J. Kim, has pleaded guilty and is to be sentenced tomorrow.

Here’s what Bloomberg News reported:

Three SK Holdings Employees Accused of Trade-Secret Theft

Three South Korean citizens employed by a SK Holdings Co. unit were charged with stealing trade secrets from Lubrizol Corp., the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio said in a statement.
Sang Ho Shin, Dong Sik Kim and Yeon Hee Lee are accused of conspiring with a Lubrizol employee to steal trade secrets relating to the company’s non-halogen flame retardant technology and static-control technology.
Lubrizol’s products that use these technologies are sold under the Estane and Stat-Rite trade names, according to court papers.
The three defendants are accused of taking the trade secrets to benefit SK Holdings’ SK Chemicals unit, a Lubrizol rival where all three were employed.
Kyung J. Kim, the Lubrizol employee who allegedly was the source of the misappropriated trade secrets, is set to be sentenced in federal court in Cleveland tomorrow for his part in the conspiracy. Kim, a former senior research and development associate, was accused of two counts of trade-secret theft and one conspiracy count.
He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years for each count, and $250,000 in fines for each. In court papers he said he committed the theft “not merely out of greed, but out of a deep feeling of failure: failure at not reaching a most distinguished level with his company, failure at not being respected at his company (it pained him that no one ever addressed him as Dr. Kim at his company), and the failure of his marriage.”
His case is U.S. v. Kim, 1:08-cr-00139-SO, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio.
The three SK employees are accused of giving Kim envelopes of $10,000 in cash at each meeting in exchange for Lubrizol trade secrets. They met with Kim at least 17 times at hotels and condominiums in Tucson, Arizona; Niagara Falls, Canada; and Suwon, South Korea, according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement.