The Federal Bureau of investigation, the U.S. accused a former employee of Apple in the theft of trade secrets. This is stated in the court documents.
Police arrested a former engineer named Xiaolan town Zhang (Zhang Xiaolang). He is accused of “draining” the development of Apple’s project unmanned vehicle control, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $ 250 thousand.
He stole a circuit Board and a server from a lab in Cupertino, where he was involved in the development of drones. He also downloaded the 25-page drawing Board the UAV, which served as the basis for criminal charges. Xiaolan town Zhang pleaded guilty in downloading files with Apple about drones. He can still have access to them, despite the dismissal.
Xiaolan town, Zhang began working for Apple in 2015 in the framework of project Titan, where he developed hardware and software for Autonomous vehicles. He was part of the team that developed and tested the Board to analyze the information gathered by the sensors. He had broad access to secure confidential internal databases, which contain a number of commercial secrets and intellectual property in the field of UAVs.
In April 2018, the engineer took a leave of absence “for family reasons” in the birth of the child and went to China. Soon after, he reported to his administrator at Apple, he quits and moves to China to work in XMotors, Chinese startup, is also working on technologies for Autonomous cars. After that started the investigation.