Employee arrested for theft of trade secrets from Machine Zone, Inc

> The Special Prosecutions and National Security Unit is responsible for supporting counterterrorism and counterespionage investigations and prosecutions in the district. In addition, the Special Prosecutions and National Security Unit prosecutes public corruption, environmental, civil rights, child exploitation, illegal export, and immigration cases.

Regardless, if you want to know the whole story, you can read the affidavit from the link which contains literally all of the details of exactly how this played out.

tl;dr - there's really not much more to the story, the summary is exactly what happened.

Theft of trade secrets is severe, but I'm always dissatisfied to see criminal charges for hurting someone's business model. In this case, there is more despicable behavior that is not being explicitly prosecuted.

- He is confirmed to have accessed a whole bunch of stuff he had no business accessing leading up to being let go.

- He wiped his laptop and moved sensitive company data BACK to the laptop from an external device after having wiped it

Many people wipe their laptops.. most people don't try to make it look like they didn't wipe their laptops, and when they're called out try to use the external drives as leverage for a better severance package.

The degree to what he was up to is definitely up for debate, but no doubt in my mind this dude fucked up several times.

edited by me for clarity:

   17 June: Zeng proposes to Orsini that Zeng make a new team.  Orsini says no.
   
   2 July: Zeng chats Orsini, "[...] just to confirm I will start [at new team]
   on August 1st".  Orsini tells Zeng there is no job requisition [at new team]
   
   7 July: Zeng's supervisor tells team that Machine Zone wants to limit # of
   employees for the year.  Zeng messages Orsini and asks if that will affect his
   new position.  Orsini says they will not be creating a new position.

   next day: Zeng goes to HR and says he thought there was an agreement with
   Orsini for a new position.
   

I worked with a manager like this. He just willfully ignored you telling him answers he didn't want to hear or didn't like. Until I finally quit, it was the worst 7 months of my career. Zeng seems to be the same.

> The thing most concerning here is that it seems like the employee never used the 'trade secret'

I don't see why this is so concerning. Most justice systems try to prevent the damages that a crime will commit even if the act is stopped. That's why attempted murder is a crime which you can be charged for.

Just to note (as far as I know) the code you write doesn't necessarily mean that it's code you own. If you write some awesome ass code for school for example the school can claim copyright or some sorts. He wrote the code while working for Machine, so they presumably own the code.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.