America Department justice prosecuted the former apple Software Engineer reportedly steal or attempt to steal technology It will take at least four months to submit your resignation to the company. The indictment alleges that Weibao Wang, 35, passed on Apple information to an unknown Chinese company. It was working on the development of self-driving cars.
Wang began working on Apple’s annotation team in 2016 and was given “broad access” to an internal database that only 2,700 of Apple’s 135,000 employees had access to, according to the indictment. . Mr. Wang worked for the company for one year before submitting his resignation in April 2018, but did not tell his boss about his future plans during his exit interview.
However, a subsequent investigation revealed that Mr. Wang signed a letter of acceptance for a full-time staff engineer position with a China-based company in late November 2017, more than four months before submitting his notice. did. According to the indictment, a month after Mr. Wang left Apple, company representatives created a database containing confidential information about the company’s autonomous systems software that had been in use for several months before Mr. Wang left the company. It was discovered that the website was being accessed.
The indictment states that a search of Wang’s Mountain View, Calif., home uncovered “multiple personal devices containing large amounts of data obtained from Apple prior to his departure,” as well as “a personal desktop computer and a personal external hard drive.” “Each drive contained various confidential and proprietary materials.” Project materials. ”
Read the indictment here:
When authorities searched his home, Wang reportedly said: Although he claimed he had no plans to leave the country, it was later discovered that he had purchased a one-way ticket from San Francisco International Airport to Guangzhou, China. According to the indictment, the plane departed that night around 11:55 p.m.
Wang becomes the third former Apple employee to be indicted on charges. Steal autonomous trade data and give it to China, then come after Zhang Xiaolang eventually pleaded guiltythis year as part of a plea agreement. stealing trade secrets from Apple’s automotive division; Another former employee, Jizhong Chen, worked as a hardware development engineer on Apple’s self-driving car project in 2018. Chen is currently facing federal charges for allegedly stealing classified information and providing it to China in 2019. Chen had previously pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Wang is charged with six separate counts of theft or attempted theft. Apple data includes: Complete autonomous system source code, autonomous system tracking, autonomous system behavior planning, hardware description, autonomous system architectural design, autonomous system behavior planner. If extradited from China and convicted, Mr. Wang faces 10 years in prison for each charge.
Apple did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
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