Anthony Levandowski, the former head of Uber’s self-driving truck division, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets. The judge presiding over the case called it “the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen.”
Before working at Uber, Levandowski was at Google, working in what would become their Waymo self-driving car spinoff company. While there he was an incredibly well-paid engineer, earning hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, when he left the company, Levandowski put Waymo files onto his personal laptop, stealing 14,000 documents. He then founded Otto, a startup focused on developing self-driving truck technology.
Just a short time later, Otto was bought by Uber for $700 million. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) sued Uber, alleging that they had bought out the company in order to get access to Google’s trade secrets. A year later, Uber agreed to settle for around $244 million.
Since Google is arguably the leading contender in the self-driving space, the trade secrets stolen and then used by Uber could easy be valued in the billions of dollars. During Levandowski’s sentencing, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup said that “this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen.”
Levandowski was initially charged with 33 counts of intellectual theft and attempted theft of trade secrets. He was able to plead guilty to just one count of intellectual theft.
For his “massive” crime, the judge sentenced Levandowski to 18 months in prison and a $95,000 fine. He will also have to pay $756,000 in restitution to Waymo. Levandowski will not have to report to prison until after the COVID-19 pandemic is over since his attorneys argued that incarceration right now could amount to a “death sentence.”
Source: truckinginfo, ttnews, freightwaves, freightwaves
“While there he was an incredibly well-PAIN engineer?”
Dumb truck drivers aren’t supposed to catch that. Written by a CNN editor in training .
Ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous. From every angle. 18 months? There are people doing 18 years over this sort of stuff. I noticed he gets to keep his billions. Wow. He will probably have a stunt double do the time for him.
I handle that 18 month for a small 1% fee
I’ll handle that 18 months for a small 1% fee!
“Watch out for the cornhole buddy”
Do you think the judge will holt every ones sentences?
Unreal, 18 months really? There are people with less crimes that are doing more time than that. You do the crime, you do the time and NOT 18 months!
Who did he have to kiss to get that