US v. Engineer (2008)
Summary
- In 2008, the U.S. government charged a design engineer with stealing trade secrets from Intel about its newest microprocessor
- value was estimated to be $1 billion
Issue
- engineer worked at Intel
- resigned from his job at the end of May 2008
- used his accrued vacation time for 2 weeks until his final day at work
- employment with Intel would end on June 11, 2008
- engineer did not tell Intel that he had a new job with competitor
- intel heard rumors that he accepted job with a competitor
- started to review logs to see his network activity
- discovered he had accessed sensitive company documents
- he remotely accessed intel system multiple times
- he downloaded highly sensitive Intel documents of a new chip design
- found no evidence that he disclosed or used the information
Outcome
- April 2012, the engineer pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud for illegally accessing the intel system and downloading documents
- sentenced to 3 years in prison