A US federal grand jury indicted two Japanese researchers on May 9 on charges of stealing cell lines and DNA from the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute (LRI; Cleveland, OH), and destroying the rest by baking them in an autoclave. Takashi Okamoto, a scientist at LRI who benefited from almost $2 million in Alzheimer's research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and other sources, allegedly lifted the materials in July 1999, taking them to his new job as a neuroscience professor at the Institute for Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN; Ibaraki, Japan), where he is thought to remain at large. Okamoto's alleged accomplice, Hiroaki Serizawa, has been arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and both men face up to 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines under the Economic Espionage Act (1996). University of Tokyo professor Robert Kneller says that in Japan it is generally accepted that non-patented biomaterials are controlled by the inventing professor, and Okamoto may have been unaware that he could have obtained the materials legally via a material transfer agreement.