A research technician has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for wire fraud after he stole an oral care company's toothpaste formula and sent it to an overseas company, the Justice Department said May 9.
Muamer Reci, 58, was employed by an unnamed oral care company. In 2012, two individuals established a consumer hygiene and cleaning products company called Reci & Sons and a subsidiary, Reci Enterprises, in Macedonia in 2015. Mr. Reci did not disclose the business entities to his employer.
A document recovered from Mr. Reci's computer contained plans for Reci Enterprises to manufacture and sell a toothpaste named Eurodent. Mr. Reci sent several emails to an individual at Reci & Sons that contained his employer's proprietary toothpaste formulas for existing products, information about an unreleased toothpaste product and proprietary laboratory procedures for the employer's products. A 2017 email contained the formula for Reci Enterprises' Eurodent toothpaste, which contained proprietary features of the employer's existing product.
In addition to the prison term, Mr. Reci was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $188,384 in restitution.