Former Apple Engineer Caught Fleeing to China Pleads Guilty to Stealing Trade Secrets

A former Apple engineer who was accused of stealing computer files with trade secrets about Apple’s car division and was caught attempting to flee the country to Communist China pleaded guilty to the charges in federal court this week.

CNBC reports that Xiaolang Zhang, a former Apple engineer, pleaded guilty in federal court in San Jose on Monday to accusations of stealing computer files with trade secrets about Apple’s secretive car division. Zhang was arrested at the San Jose as he attempted to flee the country to China.

Zhang’s plea agreement is currently under seal, according to a recent court filing. Zhang faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 after pleading guilty to the felony charge of theft of trade secrets. Zhang’s sentencing is scheduled for November.

Zhang was accused of downloading internal Apple files relating to the company’s car project, including a 25-page document with engineering schematics of a circuit board for a self-driving vehicle. Zhang was accused of copying reference manuals and PDFs describing Apple’s prototypes and prototype requirements.

Zhang was arrested by federal agents in July 2018 at the San Jose airport, Zhang reportedly planned to fly to China. Zhang previously worked for Apple since 2015 and most recently worked as a hardware engineer on Apple’s autonomous vehicle team.

Apple reportedly uses internal software to track which employees are informed on individual projects and all are required to attend secrecy training about sensitive projects, such as Apple’s vehicle division projects.

Zhang worked on the autonomous car project’s Compute Team designing and testing circuit boards for sensors. Apple first suspected that Zhang may be stealing trade secrets after he took paternity leave and traveled to China. When he returned to work, he turned in his resignation saying that he wanted to move back to China to take care of his mother.

He told Apple that he planned to work for Xmotors, a leading Chinese electric vehicle company, and his access to Apple’s network was promptly shut down. An investigation by Apple found that Zhang downloaded documents and information from company databases. Apple closed-circuit cameras also captured Zhang entering the labs and removing hardware, which was later identified as circuit boards and a Linux server.

Read more at CNBC here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan