Oregon man charged with trade secrets theft over 2008 Nike catalog
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A man who said he found advance copies of a Nike Inc. 2008 catalog and then offered to sell it to the competition has been charged with theft of trade secrets, the FBI said.
Reynold Sare Chapin, 53, was arrested by FBI agents this week at Portland International Airport in an undercover sting.
"He was living in a tent near the airport," his public defender, Jerry Needham said Friday. He said there was evidence at a hearing in federal court on Thursday that "the catalog was recovered from a Dumpster."
The investigation started when Beaverton-based Nike was tipped off by one of its competitors, Saucony Inc., that somebody had sent photocopies of pages showing unreleased Nike products, according to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Portland.
"People would die to see what's coming next," Richie Woodworth, president of Lexington, Mass.-based Saucony, told The Oregonian about the unexpected sneak peek at the unreleased Nike catalog.
Woodworth sent the unsolicited material he had received to Nike Chief Executive Mark Parker because it contained a claim the material would be sold to the highest bidder and that four CEOs had been offered a crack at it, according to the court documents.
"Although we're very competitive and sometimes intensely competitive, I just didn't think that was sort of the right way to do things," Woodworth told the newspaper.
Chapin was identified through an e-mail address included with the material that was traced to an account used at the Multnomah County Library in Portland.
FBI Special Agent Phil Slinkard then arranged to meet Chapin at the airport in an undercover sting.
"During our encounter, he showed me some personal items, disclosed that he had obtained the catalogs from the printing and binding shop where he worked and then showed me three Nike 2008 catalogs," Slinkard said in his affidavit.
Needham said a homeless man was probably not what Nike or the FBI expected.
"Mr. Chapin is certainly not some brilliant criminal mastermind, but I think a victim of circumstances," Needham said.