In an indictment filed in federal court in California, prosecutors accused Linwei Ding, a 38-year-old Chinese national, of uploading trade secrets from Google's laptop to his personal cloud storage.The documents Ding stole include the “building blocks” of Google's artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to the indictment. He uploaded it to his personal accounts over the course of one year, from May 2022 to May 2023.
Ding was arrested in Newark, California and charged with four counts of theft of trade secrets. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count.
According to the indictment, Ding first copied the information from Google Files into Apple Notes on his laptop, then converted them into PDF files that he uploaded to his personal Google account to avoid detection by Google's data loss prevention systems. Interestingly, according to prosecutors, Ding worked as a technology director at a Chinese company. He also founded and served as CEO of an artificial intelligence company in China last year.
This is not the first time the United States has arrested a Chinese citizen on charges of stealing trade secrets from American companies. In the past few years, US prosecutors in San Francisco have charged three former Apple employees with stealing trade secrets related to the company's recently shuttered Apple Car project and giving them to Chinese companies. Last month, an engineer was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $150,000 in fines.
source: Engadget
Cover image is an illustration, source: Adobe Stock
