Former Apple worker who fled to China indicted on stealing autonomous system trade secrets
SAN FRANCISCO -- A Mountain View resident and former Apple employee has been charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems nearly five years after fleeing to China, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
A federal grand jury indicted Weibao Wang, 35, on six counts of theft or attempted theft of trade secrets, according to Ismail Ramsey, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. The indictment was one of five cases and four arrests from five different U.S. Attorney's offices in connection with a recently-launched Disruptive Technology Strike Force. The unit was formed by the Departments of Justice and Commerce to counter efforts by hostile nation-states to illicitly acquire sensitive U.S. technology
Wang was assigned to work with a team at Apple that designed and developed hardware and software for autonomous systems, which can have a variety of applications including self-driving cars. The indictment alleges that Wang, who worked at Apple March 2016 to April 2018, stole or attempted to steal six categories of trade secrets:
- entire autonomy source code
- tracking for an autonomous system
- behavior planner for an autonomous system
- architecture design for an autonomous system
- descriptions of hardware systems, including architecture, modules, power, and inputs
- motion planner for an autonomous system
The indictment also alleges that in November 2017, Wang accepted a job as a staff engineer with the U.S.-based subsidiary of a company developing self-driving cars and headquartered in the People's Republic of China. Wang allegedly waited more than four months after accepting the new position before informing Apple that he was resigning.
After Wang's last day at Apple in April 2018, the company determined Wang had accessed large amounts of sensitive proprietary and confidential information in the days leading up to his departure. Law enforcement searched Wang's Mountain View home on June 27, 2018 and found large quantities of data taken from Apple in the days before he left. According to the indictment, Wang told agents he had no plans to travel but later that day bought a one-way plane ticket from San Francisco International Airport to Guangzhou, China and boarded a flight that night.
Wang faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine in the amount of $250,000 for each count of theft or attempted theft of trade secrets. His case was being prosecuted by the Special Prosecutions Section of the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.
Of the five cases pursued by the disruptive techonology strike force, two involved former software engineers with stealing software and hardware source code from U.S. tech companies in order to market it to Chinese competitors. Two other cases involved the disruption of alleged procurement networks created to help the Russian military and intelligence services obtain sensitive technology in violation of U.S. laws.
The fifth case involved a Chinese procurement network established to provide Iran with materials used in weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and ballistic missiles.