Chinese-Born Ex-Apple Employee Pleads Guilty to Trade Secret Theft

The Apple logo at the entrance of an Apple store in Washington on Sept. 14, 2021. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

A former Apple employee pleaded guilty on Aug. 22 to stealing internal files from the tech giant’s automotive division.

A court filing (pdf) shows that Xiaolang Zhang pleaded guilty to trade secret theft in federal court in San Jose, California, facing up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Zhang’s plea agreement with the U.S. government is under seal, according to the document, while sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 14.

Zhang, a former engineer at Apple, allegedly downloaded a blueprint related to an autonomous car onto his personal laptop before trying to flee overseas, according to a 2018 criminal complaint filed in federal court.

The Chinese-born permanent U.S. resident joined Apple in 2015 and worked on a secretive self-driving car program as a hardware engineer. He designed and tested circuit boards to analyze sensor data. According to the complaint, about 5,000 of Apple’s 135,000 employees were allowed to learn about the project, but only 2,700 had access to secret databases, including Zhang.

When Zhang revealed in April 2018 that he was going to work for Chinese competitor XMotors, an electric car startup headquartered in Guangzhou, Apple terminated his system access and began a forensic analysis of his company devices.

Federal prosecutors later claimed Zhang took a confidential 25-page document containing detailed schematic drawings of a circuit board designed for an autonomous vehicle, despite knowing such schematics are typically deemed top trade secrets in the electronics industry.

Zhang was also accused of obtaining internal data related to Apple’s prototypes.

The FBI seized Zhang at the San Jose International Airport on July 7, 2018, just before he could board a flight for China with a last-minute-purchased ticket. Zhang was later charged with theft of trade secrets by a federal judge but released on bail after pleading not guilty at the time.

XMotors, the automaker Zhang joined after leaving Apple in 2018, wrote on China’s Twitter-like Weibo on Aug. 23 that the company had no dispute with Apple over the issue and wasn’t involved in Zhang’s case in any form.

Another former Apple employee, Jizhong Chen, is also facing charges related to allegedly stealing trade secrets in early 2019. Chen, who was represented by the same lawyer as Zhang, has pleaded not guilty. The U.S. citizen allegedly took more than 2,000 files from Apple’s electric car division before being arrested ahead of his trip to China, prosecutors said.

Chen has a court hearing scheduled for Aug. 29. Trial dates have yet to be set.

Apple expressed its “deep concerns“ to a federal court in late 2019 that the two would try to flee before their trials without being adequately monitored.

The case further sheds light on the company’s rumored automotive project—a fully autonomous electric vehicle.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.