Ex-Google engineer charged with theft of secrets

SAN FRANCISCO: A former Google engineer was hit with criminal charges Tuesday alleging he stole trade secrets from the technology giant´s self-driving car project and took them to Uber. If convicted on the charges, Anthony Levandowski faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, according federal prosecutors who announced the criminal indictment.

“All of us have the right to change jobs, none of us has the right to fill our pockets on the way out the door,” US Attorney David Anderson said in a release announcing 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets. “Theft is not innovation. Levandowski, 39, was a founding member of the group that worked on Waymo, a Google self-driving car project that is now a unit at parent company Alphabet. Levandowski worked on the project from 2009 and was leader of the light-detecting and ranging (LiDAR) team when he resigned from Google without notice in January of 2016, according to the indictment.