Ex-Intel Engineer Steals Sensitive Documents
An ex-Intel engineer has been handed additional charges for allegedly stealing documents of a sensitive nature from the chip making company after secretly starting a new job with AMD.
Biswamohan Pani, 33, was indicted on Wednesday on four additional counts of wire fraud following his initial charges for stealing trade secrets back in September.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claims that Pani, an ex-designer for Intel’s Itanium chips, stole eight sensitive documents from Intel’s Massachusetts facility while he was on holiday after resigning from his post.
Pani allegedly spoke to his managers at Intel, claiming that he was leaving because a hedge fund had shown “some interest” to him, and were going to let him handle their “multi-million dollar accounts”. However, the real story was that he had been offered a job at AMD months before his resignation, and was due to start four days after he left Intel.
The dodgy engineer spent hi last few days at Intel using up holiday time, and only returned for his last day.
The sneaky Pani used his Intel-supplied laptop to access the company’s network and download the sensitive documents – while on both AMD and Intel’s payroll.
Intel said that it didn’t immediately cut-off Pani’s network access to the company as it was unaware he was working for a competitor.
On his final day, Pani returned to the office for his farewell interview. It was at this point he admitted he was joining AMD. Pani then lied through his teeth that he had kept his confidentiality obligation, and returned all Intel property, prosecutors claim.
This was where Pani slipped up. Because the stolen documents were encrypted, and needed special steps to review after being disconnected from Intel’s systems, when Pani tried to access the network two days after he’d left the company via a copy of his Intel laptop, he got passed the initial login but got stopped at the next security step.
Pani admitted taking the documents, but only out curiosity, according to the FBI, and AMD are claiming no responsibility for Pani’s actions.
“AMD is cooperating fully in the FBI investigation into this matter,” said AMD spokesman Michael Silverman. “AMD has not been accused of wrongdoing, and the FBI has stated that there is no evidence that AMD had any involvement in or awareness of Mr. Pani’s alleged actions.”
Pani could face up to ten years in jail for the theft of trade secrets, and a possible 20 years each for four counts of wire fraud.
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