The FBI Warns Massachusetts Tech Companies on Russian Investors

It sounds like a scare from 1970s Cold War propaganda or a subplot from the popular TV series "The Americans," but the FBI says the threat is real: Russian investment firms may be looking to steal high-tech intelligence from Boston-area companies to give to their country's military.

In an extraordinary warning issued to technology companies in Massachusetts, the FBI's Boston office said entrepreneurs could unwittingly be drawn into industrial espionage if they work with Russian-backed venture capital firms operating here and in Silicon Valley. 

The bureau said it has sent notices to local companies and research facilities such as universities, and on Friday published an op-ed piece by an agent in the FBI's Boston office.

The FBI singled out the Skolkovo Foundation, founded by Russia's prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, that in 2011 enlisted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to start an elite technical college in Russia modeled after the Cambridge school. 

''The foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation's sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application," Lucia Ziobro, assistant special agent at the FBI's Boston's office, wrote in an op-ed piece that was published online by the Boston Business Journal Friday.

Skolkovo officials could not be reached for comment. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. 

Ziobro said Monday that the FBI does not have any evidence that this has occurred. 

Instead, the warning grew out of a proliferation of intellectual property theft from US companies by Chinese firms over the past decade.

Like China, Russia has lax intellectual property protections, Ziobro said, and a documented history of corruption that could lead to similar thefts of American technology. 

Though the FBI did not single out Russian venture capital firms by name, two of the best-known in the technology community are RVC, which has a US office in Boston, and RUSNANO USA, which is based in Silicon Valley and has invested in several Massachusetts companies.

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