Weibao Wang (Weibao Wang)

Weibao Wang (Weibao Wang)

Biography

2023: Charge over transfer of "vast swathes" of technology to China

On May 16, 2023, the US Department of Justice formally indicted a former Apple employee in the case of stealing "huge amounts" of data and trying to transfer it to China.

The person involved in the proceedings is 35-year-old Weibao Wang, who previously lived in Mountain View in California. He was hired by Apple in 2016 as a software engineer. It is noted that during employment, Wang signed an agreement with Apple on non-disclosure of confidential information, and was also briefed on working with classified information. Wang joined the team of specialists who worked on software and hardware for autonomous systems, which can be used, among other things, in robotic cars.

In November 2017, according to the case file, Weibao Wang accepted a full-time job offer as a full-time engineer in the US division of a certain Chinese company developing technologies for self-driving vehicles. However, Wang chose not to inform Apple about the planned departure. After the accused left the company on April 16, 2018, Apple specialists looked at the activity logs and found that Wang gained access to a large amount of proprietary and confidential information.

A search by law enforcement on June 27, 2018, at Wang's Mountain View residence confirmed the theft of Apple's corporate secrets: confidential documents relating to developments in self-driving vehicles were found. At that moment, the suspect said that he was not going to leave the United States, but soon flew from San Francisco to Guangzhou, taking a one-way ticket. If convicted and extradited to the US, Wang faces a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.^[1]

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