Former Apple employee Weibao Wang has been formally charged by the Department of Justice with six total counts of theft for allegedly stealing Apple technology developed for its autonomous car project for the benefit of an unnamed Chinese company. The DOJ announced the charges today alongside other details reported first reported by CNBC.
During his time at Apple, which lasted from 2016 to 2018, Wang worked as a software engineer on the company’s Annotation Team. His role permitted him “broad access” into secretive databases accessible to only 2,700 employees, according to the DOJ. “Not all employees disclosed on the Project had access to the Databases. Around April 2018, approximately 2,700 Apple employees had access to one or more of the Databases,” reads the DOJ indictment.
In April 2018, Wang emailed his resignation to his supervisor at Apple, informing them that his final day at the company would be April 16, 2018, according to the DOJ indictment. However, Wang’s resignation email did not mention his future plans nor the organization he intended to join after departing from Apple. Additionally, during the exit interview with his supervisor, Wang chose not to disclose the details of his next employment opportunity following his departure from Apple.
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Without Apple’s knowledge, around November 2017, which was over four months prior to his resignation email, Wang agreed to a job offer as a full-time Staff Engineer with the U.S.-based subsidiary of a company headquartered in China that was engaged in the development of self-driving cars, adds the DOJ indictment.
In May 2018, Apple officials examined access records that detailed past activity on Apple’s network. During the review, they discovered that Wang had accessed significant volumes of confidential and proprietary information related to the autonomous car project shortly before leaving Apple.
A police search of Wang’s residence in California was executed on June 27, 2018, where they found “large quantities of stolen, confidential, and proprietary data.” Wang departed the US on the same day his residence search was carried out, landing in Guangzhou, China, after assuring agents he had no intention of fleeing the US.
Upon analyzing multiple devices confiscated from Wang’s residence, it was discovered that he had preserved substantial amounts of data obtained from Apple before his departure. Wang’s personal desktop computer and personal external hard drive both contained a range of confidential and proprietary materials, according to the DOJ indictment. Notably, the recovered materials included the complete source code of the autonomous car project as it existed during the period encompassing Wang’s departure from Apple.
The DOJ has formally charged Wang with six total counts of theft or attempted theft of Apple’s “entire autonomy source code,” including “tracking systems, behavior planning for autonomous systems, and descriptions of the hardware that was behind the systems.” If extradited, Wang would face ten years in prison per convicted count, according to the US Attorney for the Northern District of California.
The two other former Apple engineers thought to steal autonomous technology for Chinese companies are Xiaolang Zhang and Jizhong Chen. Zhang pleaded guilty to theft charges similar to those of Wang, whereas Chen’s trial is still in progress.
