Ex-Apple Employee Stole Secrets for Chinese Firm, U.S. Says

Ex-Apple Employee Stole Secrets for Chinese Firm, U.S. Says
Fotolia

A former Apple engineer was arrested on charges of stealing driverless car secrets for a Chinese startup, according to Bloomberg.

Xiaolang Zhang was accused by U.S. prosecutors of downloading files containing proprietary information as he prepared to leave the iPhone maker in April and start work for Guangzhou-based Xiaopeng Motors. A hardware engineer for Apple’s autonomous vehicle development team, Zhang was granted access to confidential company databases, according to the complaint.

After he took paternity leave he told Apple in April he was moving back to China to work at Xmotors. Apple grew more suspicious after seeing his increased network activity and visits to the office before he resigned, according to the complaint. Zhang admitted to the FBI that he downloaded Apple driverless technology files to his wife’s laptop to have continued access to them, according to the complaint.

Apple’s self-driving car project is a rare initiative by the company that has played out in the public eye over the past few years. In 2015, Apple executives approved a plan to build a self-driving, electric vehicle to take on Tesla and the Detroit auto industry. Apple hired more than 1,000 engineers. However, about two years ago, Apple scaled back its plans to build a physical vehicle and has since had a team working on the underlying self-driving software and sensor technology.