The Justice Department said on Wednesday that a former Google software engineer has been accused of surreptitiously working with two Chinese businesses while taking trade secrets related to artificial intelligence from the company. Chinese citizen Linwei Ding was taken into custody in Newark, California, on four charges of stealing federal trade secrets, each of which carries a maximum 10-year jail sentence, according to the AP.
Google reported the incident to law police after determining that the employee had taken "numberous documents." Unveiled on Wednesday, the indictment in the Northern District of California claims that Ding, 38, a 2019 hire of Google with access to proprietary data about the company's supercomputing data centers, started uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago.
Prosecutors claim that within weeks of the theft beginning, Ding received an offer to become chief technology officer of an early-stage Chinese technology business that highlighted its use of artificial intelligence (AI) and promised him a salary of around $14,800 per month along with an annual bonus and company shares. According to the accusation, Ding went to China, attended investor meetings at the business, and attempted to obtain money for it.
In a different venture, he established and led a firm in China with the goal of developing "large AI models powered by supercomputing chips," according to the indictment. According to the prosecution, Ding did not reveal his connection to Google, which on Wednesday identified him as a junior employee. He left Google on December 26 of last year.
Officials at Google discovered three days later that he had given a presentation at a Beijing investment conference in his capacity as the CEO of one of the Chinese firms. Authorities also watched surveillance tape that demonstrated how, according to the indictment, a different worker had scanned Ding's access badge at the Google office in the US to make it seem as if he was there while, in fact, he was in China.
After locking Ding's laptop and suspending his network access, Google looked through his network activity history and found his illicit uploads. In January, the FBI obtained a search warrant for Ding's residence and took his gadgets. Subsequently, they carried out another search order to get the data from Ding's personal accounts, which included over 500 distinct files of private information that the authorities claim he pilfered from Google.
Google reported the incident to law police after determining that the employee had taken "numberous documents." Unveiled on Wednesday, the indictment in the Northern District of California claims that Ding, 38, a 2019 hire of Google with access to proprietary data about the company's supercomputing data centers, started uploading hundreds of files into a personal Google Cloud account two years ago.
Prosecutors claim that within weeks of the theft beginning, Ding received an offer to become chief technology officer of an early-stage Chinese technology business that highlighted its use of artificial intelligence (AI) and promised him a salary of around $14,800 per month along with an annual bonus and company shares. According to the accusation, Ding went to China, attended investor meetings at the business, and attempted to obtain money for it.
In a different venture, he established and led a firm in China with the goal of developing "large AI models powered by supercomputing chips," according to the indictment. According to the prosecution, Ding did not reveal his connection to Google, which on Wednesday identified him as a junior employee. He left Google on December 26 of last year.
Officials at Google discovered three days later that he had given a presentation at a Beijing investment conference in his capacity as the CEO of one of the Chinese firms. Authorities also watched surveillance tape that demonstrated how, according to the indictment, a different worker had scanned Ding's access badge at the Google office in the US to make it seem as if he was there while, in fact, he was in China.
After locking Ding's laptop and suspending his network access, Google looked through his network activity history and found his illicit uploads. In January, the FBI obtained a search warrant for Ding's residence and took his gadgets. Subsequently, they carried out another search order to get the data from Ding's personal accounts, which included over 500 distinct files of private information that the authorities claim he pilfered from Google.
