Ex-Apple executive jailed and fined for selling secrets | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Apple executive jailed and fined for selling secrets

bbc.com

56 pointsadamlvs16 comments

This is business-as-usual for suppliers over here in China. Just yesterday I had one supplier we were quoting send a text message to one of my lead project engineers asking him for inside information on pricing for a quotation. In each of the last three years, I've fired at least one employee for kickback activity. I had one employee setup a shell company we paid $100,000 USD to it for products with about $50,000 USD in actual market value. Now, I am learning about the China court system, paid $15000 USD for a legal team to try to put his head on a platter for embezzlement, just so we can show the rest of our current and future employees in hopes they will be too scared to try this again. Sourcing in China is hard. Now, I have 4 staff accountants running around in a 15 person office, just to ensure enough checks and balances in place to keep us from getting robbed. Trust is not an option.

I thought trade secrets were a civil, not a criminal, matter.

If it was flagrant and damages are obviously there I could see it prosecuted as grand theft or trafficking in stolen goods. Could also fall under computer fraud and abuse act or wire fraud statutes depending on what he did. But IANAL.

It's also possible that he did other things to gather or sell secrets that are criminal-- wiretapping, theft of private communications, entering offices when people aren't there, etc.

The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 criminalized the misappropriation of trade secrets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Espionage_Act_of_1996

According to the description it was more a "kickback scheme" than selling trade secrets.

Wire fraud and money laundering are federal crimes, I assume conspiracy too. Illegally acquired money is a trap: you cannot spend it without running afoul of some very serious federal statutes. Thus criminals attempt to "launder" the money so it can be spent without raising red flags, but that is a federal crime itself. Catch 22.

>> Investigations into his behaviour started after emails were found in which he agreed to hand over inside information in return for payment.

I'd be curious to see how exactly this occurred. The above blurb is the only mention of it in the entire (super short) article.

I'm curious for two reasons:

1) I work for a big tech company and have a technology consulting services company on the side. I'm curious to see how my outside emails may be eavesdropped upon.

2) Were those emails obtained legally? I can't imagine he was using his apple email to send the emails, does this mean they went through his personal email? If so, was this done legally?

You can assume, any internet activity you do on enterprise network is scanned.

From another article: According to the suit, Apple began its own internal investigation of Devine in April, and uncovered the trove of e-mails he purportedly sent to alleged Singaporean accomplice Andrew Ang and several Asian companies containing confidential data and instructions on how to pay his kickbacks. This occurred when Apple officials discovered a Microsoft Entourage database of Devine's Hotmail and Gmail accounts "on the imaged copy of Devine's laptop hard drive."

src: http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/17/paul-shin-devin...

Also, most employers will tell you that they can (& will) monitor any activity done on your company issued devices (laptop, phones, anything). That seems pretty standard.

Thanks.

Greed; it gets you to the top, but it's a fickle and volatile nature can quickly spin out of control.

Curious: Why weren't the Asian companies involved in the scheme prosecuted?

Probably not enough evidence, plus jurisdiction issues.

Steal a few million from a company, go to jail.

Steal billions from the public and cause a global financial meltdown, stay free.

This ^ may sound like a banal observation, but it doesn't make it any less true.

Or any more relevant to this discussion

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