Weibao Wang, a former Apple software engineer, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for stealing trade secrets about the company's work on developing self-driving cars. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced the charges on Tuesday. According to the indictment, Wang began working as a software engineer at Apple in March 2016. In November 2017, he signed an employment agreement with the company's autonomous vehicle team but failed to inform Apple of his new position and resigned four months later in April 2018. A subsequent review of his Apple network activity determined he had accessed a large amount of sensitive, proprietary, and confidential information within days of his departure from the company. Wang's home in California was searched in June 2018 at which time Apple data was discovered. However, he had already left the U.S. for Guangzhou, China.

The U.S. Attorney's office did not reveal the name of Wang’s second employer, but it is reported to be a U.S.-based subsidiary of a Chinese company headquartered in the People's Republic of China. This case is notable for the significant amount of data allegedly stolen by Wang.

According to the indictment, in 2016 he stole or attempted to steal the entire autonomy source code along with architecture and design, autonomous system descriptions, and schematics for hardware systems.

Apple has been working on developing self-driving cars under the codename Project Titan for several years, but the project has experienced numerous setbacks. Earlier this year, it was reported that Apple had scaled down its ambitions and was focusing on developing a self-driving system that could be integrated with other car makers' vehicles.

That is not the first time a tech giant has dealt with trade secret theft allegations. In October 2018, Chinese spy Yanjun Xu was extradited to the U.S. to face charges of trying to steal secrets from American aviation and aerospace companies, including GE Aviation, as part of a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group.