Apple engineer admits the theft of confidential documents on the electric car

The former Apple engineer has pleaded guilty, accused by the US authorities of stealing trade secrets from the Cupertino company. In court for stealing information about Apple’s self-driving car project (the Titan project), Xiaolang Zhang, his name, has pledged, as evidenced by the ruling filed Monday in San Jose, California. The man, who initially pleaded not guilty, faces up to ten years in prison and a $ 250,000 fine. The sentence is scheduled for November 14th. Another former Apple employee, Jizhong Chen, is also accused of stealing trade secrets from Apple’s electric car division. Chen, a US citizen, like Zhang had planned to travel to China. The suspect, represented by Zhang’s own lawyer, pleaded guilty.

Xiaolang Zhang worked as a hardware engineer in Apple’s autonomous vehicle division and was part of the team that designed and tested circuit boards for sensors (generally considered to be among the most valuable trade secrets). He was arrested by FBI agents at San Jose International Airport in July 2018 while trying to board a flight to China. According to investigators, he transferred a 25-page document with the technical diagrams of a printed circuit board for Apple’s self-driving vehicle to his wife’s laptop, along with technical manuals describing the prototype. The engineer was also accused of stealing printed circuit boards and a Linux server from the company’s development labs. All this shortly before telling the company that he intended to return to China and take a job with Xpeng Motors, a Chinese electric car startup. Zhang reportedly told Apple that he would return to China to be closer to his sick mother.

Xpeng recently distanced himself from the case, stating that it has nothing to do with Zhang’s case, is not aware of any details of the case, has not been involved in the investigation of the US judicial authorities and has no pending charges of any kind. with Apple. Thanks to the affair, information on the development of Apple’s self-driving car project was also leaked. The investigations revealed that in 2018 the company had around 5,000 employees who were aware of the project and 2,700 employees who had access to the project’s materials and databases. Apple began to suspect that Zhang had stolen trade secrets after he took paternity leave and went to China. When he returned to the company, he resigned, saying he wanted to go home to take care of his mother. According to the records, at that point he would also have communicated to Apple the intention to work for a Chinese company.

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