By: Aaron Kim, ITMG Insider Threat Analyst
A former Apple engineer has pleaded guilty to trade secret theft. Xiaolang Zhang is one of two people accused of stealing secrets of Apple’s self-driving car program.
U.S. prosecutors have alleged that Zhang downloaded the plan for a circuit board for Apple’s self-driving vehicle after disclosing his intentions to work for a Chinese autonomous car startup and booking a last-minute flight to China. He was arrested at the San Jose airport after he passed through a security checkpoint. Zhang has been accused of downloading a 25-page Apple document to his wife’s computer that included schematic drawings of a circuit board design for a portion of an autonomous vehicle.
Zhang joined Apple in 2015 as a hardware engineer in its autonomous car project. Three years later, Zhang announced his intention to resign due to wanting to return to China to be near his sick mother and that he intended to take a job at Xpeng Inc, an electric vehicle start up in based in China.
Xpeng said in a statement it was aware of the latest developments in the case but is “not clear about the details, nor involved in further investigations conducted by US law enforcement.” Xpeng added, “We have no controversy against Apple and have no correlation with this case. Xpeng strictly abides by the related laws and highly values the protection of intellectual property.”
Zhang initially pleaded not guilty to the charges but according to court documents on Monday, he had reached a plea deal with prosecutors and changed his plea to guilty. The plea deal is sealed, and sentencing is set for November.
In January 2019, federal prosecutors charged another Apple engineer with stealing proprietary information from the company’s self-driving car project while applying to work for a Chinese rival. Prosecutors found Jizhong Chen stole thousands of sensitive documents along with 100 photos taken inside the company’s self-driving facility after finding his hard drive. The engineer told Apple he planned to travel to China to visit his ill father, but he was arrested before he could board his direct flight. Chen has pleaded not guilty, and the case is still pending.
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