An ex-Apple software engineer is facing charges for allegedly stealing the company’s autonomous systems technology before then fleeing to China, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. According to the indictment, the tech giant hired Californian Weibao Wang, 35, in 2016 but a year later, he took on another U.S.-based job with a Chinese self-driving car company—without letting Apple know for four months. Wang, who worked on Apple’s Annotation Team, had access to databases only 2 percent of employees could get into. When federal agents searched his home in 2018, they found Wang stored “large quantities” of “various confidential, proprietary materials” stolen from Apple, the indictment states. The same day as the search, Wang boarded a plane and made a run for it to Guangzhou, China, even after promising to authorities that he wouldn’t. Apple began working on car technology in 2014 with “Project Titan,” and reports say the company has been testing vehicles on roads in California.
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