A group of western Iowa businessmen are being sued over an alleged “brazen and coordinated scheme” to take over highly classified work for the federal government by poaching employees and stealing trade secrets from their employer.
Oaklea Simpson Security, a Westminster, Maryland, company, is suing several former employees of its Iowa office in Mills County, including Douglas Grave of Glenwood; Rex Thomas of Treynor; Wesley Carter of Malvern; Steven Douglas of Omaha, and Timothy Sullivan of Chesapeake, Virginia. Corporate co-defendants include the newly formed CODA Data Sciences Inc. of Omaha and Intuitive Research and Technology Corporation, or IRTC, of Texas.
Oaklea is alleging the defendants, while still employed by Oaklea, participated in a “brazen and coordinated scheme” to secretly form CODA Data Sciences as a competing business. The defendants are accused of systematically misappropriating “vast amounts” of Oaklea’s confidential information and trade secrets while orchestrating a mass resignation of 24 Oaklea employees and diverting to CODA a multimillion-dollar government contract once held by Oaklea…