China’s beleaguered telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is in hot water again, the subject of a new investigation by federal prosecutors over allegations that it stole trade secrets from U.S. firms.

The Wall Street Journal said the probe is already at an advanced stage, and that Huawei could soon find itself being indicted over the allegations.

The investigation is said to stem from a civil lawsuit against Huawei launched in 2015 that eventually concluded the Chinese firm had misappropriated technology from the mobile network operator T-Mobile USA Inc. The case related to a robotic device called “Tappy,” which T-Mobile had built in order to test smartphones.

Huawei was alleged to have gained access to one of T-Mobile’s labs and stolen parts of that device. The company denied any wrongdoing, though it did admit that two of its employees had acted improperly. T-Mobile had sought $500 million in damages but ultimately was awarded just $4.8 million at the conclusion of the case in May 2017.

The T-Mobile lawsuit might have been “relatively small potatoes” in global enterprise terms, but it’s just one of several allegations that add up to “indicate a continuing pattern of behavior that deserves deeper investigation and remedies” by federal prosecutors, said Charles King of Pund-IT Inc.

Indeed, Huawei has long been suspected of benefiting from economic espionage and the forced transfer of technologies from foreign companies that do business in China. Way back in 2012, for example, Cisco Systems Inc. accused Huawei of stealing the source code of its routing software. Huawei denied those allegations too, saying the code had come from a third party and was freely available on the internet.

Huawei has also been under scrutiny from its alleged close ties with the Chinese government. The U.S. has effectively blocked Huawei from installing its telecommunications equipment in major networks because of fears that its gear could be used to spy on Americans.

Things came to a head late last year with the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada at the behest of U.S. officials. Wanzhou has been charged with fraud for deceptive practices that allegedly helped Huawei to sidestep sanctions on Iran, and is currently fighting extradition to the U.S.

The situation was exacerbated when another Huawei executive was arrested in Poland earlier this month on charges of spying for China. Wang Weijing, who was Huawei’s head of sales in the European country, has since been fired for bringing the company into “disrepute.” Huawei denied all knowledge of his actions in that particular case.

“The drumbeat of IP theft and spying allegations against the company along with the arrests of executives are likely to further injure its already damaged reputation and hinder attempts to move on,” King said. “It’s likely to be an expensive, ugly process that, given the DOJ’s resources, could stretch on for months or even years.”

The latest allegations show that Huawei is a company under siege on a global level, but it’s not clear how its businesses will be affected because most of its contracts are long-term, said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc.

Mueller said the firing of Huawei’s Polish executive “did not look good” for a company that claims it’s staying strictly in the technology business. However, he said that “the assumption has to be that Huawei is innocent until proven guilty.”

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