US authorities last night charged three people with a cloak-and-dagger scheme to sell secrets from Coca-Cola to soft drink arch-rival PepsiCo, which helped in the investigation.
The US Justice Department said a criminal complaint named Edmund Duhaney, 43, and Joya Williams, 41, both of Georgia, and Ibrahim Dimson, 30, of New York, with wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling trade secrets from The Coca-Cola Company.
The offer of 'confidential' information from Coca-Cola sparked an FBI investigation with an undercover agent offering $1.5m in cash.
The investigation was launched after PepsiCo turned over to its cola rival a letter in May from a person identifying himself as 'Dirk', who claimed to be employed at a high level with Coca-Cola and offered 'very detailed and confidential information', a Justice Department statement said.
Coca-Cola contacted the FBI, which launched the probe leading to the arrests.
PepsiCo senior vice president for public relations Mark Dollins confirmed that his company alerted Coke to the scheme. 'We only did what any responsible company would do,' Dollins said. 'Competition can be tough, but we must always be fair and legal.'
The three were to appear before a magistrate in Atlanta later today.
According to authorities, an FBI undercover agent met with Dimson on June 16. He had been posing as 'Dirk' at an airport in Atlanta. Dimson gave the agent 'a brown Armani Exchange bag containing one manila envelope with documents marked 'highly confidential' and one glass bottle with a white label containing a liquid product sample,' the statement said.
The undercover agent paid 'Dirk' $30,000 and agreed to pay an additional $45,000 after testing the sample. On June 27, an undercover agent offered to buy the remaining trade secret items for $1.5m, and on that day Duhaney and Dimson opened a bank account to receive a wire transfer, officials said. The three suspects were arrested later in the day.
Officials said they had videotape from Coca-Cola showing Williams at her desk 'going through multiple files looking for documents and stuffing them into bags,' the statement said. 'She also was observed holding a liquid container with a white label, which resembled the description of a new Coca-Cola product sample before placing it into her personal bag.'
Coca-Cola later verified the sample was genuine and is in fact a product being developed by the company, the Justice Department said.
