Top Secrets STOLEN – Feds Catch Chinese Spy!
(WatchDogReport.org) – The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has taken many adversarial positions against the United States, such as its military exercises near Taiwan that began when several congresspeople visited the island. They also use people to try and steal trade secrets from American companies like Apple, as in the case of Xiaolang Zhang, who just pled guilty to such a scheme.
A former Apple engineer who was accused of stealing computer files with trade secrets about Apple’s car division and was caught attempting to flee the country to Communist China pleaded guilty to the charges in federal court this week. https://t.co/TbgEuNS1oH
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 24, 2022
Zhang was an engineer working on both software and hardware related to Apple’s contribution to an autonomous vehicle project in 2018. In April of that year, he took a 28-day paternity leave after the birth of a child, and during that time, took his family on a trip to China.
On the 30th of that month, according to court documents, Zhang came into the office and told his supervisor he would be resigning to move back to his home country to take care of his sick mother. Feeling uncomfortable with parts of the interview, the supervisor called in the company’s security team, and things began to unravel for the engineer.
After an examination of security camera footage and computer records, they confronted Zhang about nighttime visits over the prior two nights, and he eventually acknowledged taking circuit boards and schematics. His guilty plea to one count of “theft of trade secrets” that benefited a foreign government means he faces a fine of up to $500,000, up to 15 years in prison, or both.
Copyright 2022, WatchDogReport.org
