An Apple employee suspected of stealing trade secrets faces 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 after the company reportedly found their intellectual property on his personal hard drive.
Jizhong Chen is the second Chinese national working on their autonomous project to be accused of the crime in six months, after Xiaolang Zhang was arrested by FBI last July.
Now electrical engineer Chen is in hot water after Apple Global Security allegedly discovered ‘over two thousand files containing confidential and proprietary Apple material, including manuals, schematics, and diagrams’ about Project Titan.
Approximately one hundred photographs taken from within the California Apple building and containing information on the driverless car project were allegedly stored on his computer.
Employees said he allowed them to search his device after a fellow worker caught Chen taking pictures in an area that was deemed sensitive, NBC Bay Area reported.
The publication’s investigative unit said materials found included an ‘assembly drawing of an Apple-designed wiring harness for an autonomous vehicle’.
Screen images – including some from his own device – that contained sensitive company information were allegedly discovered.
Chen – part of a 1,200 core team – also recently applied for a job with a competitor the Cupertino company claimed in the complaint.
He joined Apple in June 2018 and was put on a performance improvement plan in December. It’s believed he was stealing information up until last month.
Two hundred employees – of 5,000 general employees – were recently laid off the secret project which has been in action for years, CNBC reported last week.
His arrest came only a day before he was due to fly to China after telling his employers he was visiting his sick father, The Verge reported.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations complaint, some of the materials found date back to a few weeks after he started the job which puts it around the same time another Chinese native was arrested.
The circumstances are similar to that of Zhang who was accused of attempting to share trade secrets with XMotors in China after working for Apple in the US.
pple stated Zhang was returning to China to see his ill mother.
The tech giant said he told them he was also resigning to work for Xiaopeng Motors in his home country.
But when they obtained his laptop and iPhones Apple allegedly discovered he’d AirDropped details of the project to his wife’s device.
Sixty percent of the details within the 40GB share were deemed ‘highly problematic’.
‘Apple takes confidentiality and the protection of our IP very seriously,’ Tom Neumayr, a spokesperson for Apple, said in an email statement to DailyMail.com. ‘We are working with authorities on this matter and are referring all questions to the FBI.’
Daniel Olmos, a lawyer for Chen, declined to comment.
It comes as the US Justice Department this week unveiled a raft of charges against China’s Huawei. The phone company’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou could be extradited to the United States charged with violating US and UN prohibitions on trading with Iran.
The charges detail efforts by Huawei and its subsidiaries to trick financial institutions into sanctions-busting activity, AFP reported.
In a separate case, she’s accused of rewarding employees for stealing competitor’s secrets
Huawei denies wrongdoing and Beijing has said the allegations are politically motivated.
Source: Dailymail
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