Former Intel worker faces more charges in alleged trade secrets theft

A former Intel employee who previously was charged with stealing trade secrets from the chipmaker reportedly faces four new charges of wire fraud.

The FBI in August charged Biswahoman Pani with theft of trade secrets after allegedly finding more than 100 pages of sensitive Intel documents, including 13 "top secret" files with designs for future processor chips, inside Pani's home. The information Pani obtained reportedly was worth more than $1 billion in research and development costs.

Pani resigned from Intel in May, stating he would continue working there through June 11, according to the FBI. However, he began working for rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices on June 2, while he still had access to his Intel laptop and the company's computer network. The indictment against Pani alleges he collected the sensitive information from Intel for its competitive value to his new employer.

Intel asked the FBI and the Justice Department to intervene after learning about Pani's job at AMD from another Intel employee. The FBI said there is no evidence that AMD knew of or encouraged Pani's actions or ever received the confidential Intel files. Pani is no longer employed by AMD.

The five charges against Pani have been filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, with the latest four counts of wire fraud added Wednesday. Pani could serve a maximum of 10 years in prison if found guilty of theft of trade secrets and could serve up to 20 years for each count of wire fraud.

[Eduardo_DiazBaez]

Sounds a lot to me like the Cola wars of the years past. I personally don't have a preference either way towards Intel or AMD but, to mess with a power house company like Intel takes some guts. I must say, if it was that easy for him to get the files then Intel needs to re visit it's security department and make some fast changes. How easy would it be for another employee to do the same thing only not tell everyone he's doing it or about his "new job at AMD" and get away with it? Good story. Hope to hear more on this and maybe something from either of the companies in response to the occurrences.

[Astinsan]

Do we really know if these "top secret documents" were stolen or were acquired for current projects that this Pani guy was working on... For all we know they could be documents on what the product could do. No real data.

I am not defending anyone in this I am just stating that this could be a over exaggeration of actual data.

Kind of like when people call the insurance companies because of a wreck that really turns out to be a ding or scratch.

[antonydupuy]

You gotta a pretty good set on you to try something like this.

[MacHeads]

First might i recall any man is innocent until proven guilty...

Second , the first time i read about this story it was clearly explained the man accessed the documents on the behalf of his wife who works at Intel. In such case it is merely a question of unauthorized communication within the familly circle , how can this happen , simple "honey could you please access such file on the server and transfer them to my machine ??? how many times did one of us did that time and again ???" .

Furthermore Intel is accusing the guy of "planning to use this information to advance his career at AMD or elsewhere by drawing on it when the opportunity arose, whether with his employer's knowledge or not." Which is totally unprovable , You cannot accuse someone of "planning" without an inch of proof to back up your claim and without the person of having a troubled history.

Not only is AMD denying the intent but AMD is fully cooperating with the ongoing investigation , which in all good faith shows they did not expect to benefit from the leak.

Furthermore the charge of theft of trade secret cannot hold since Intel does not have any proof to back up its accusations... So all in all Intel is just flapping its wings without :

a) actual proof of wrongdoing
b) actual proof of wrongful intent from mr Pani
c) AMD's cooperation with the investigator is the final nail on the case's coffin.
d) if Intel launched such an attack on AMD entailing the wrongful termination of Mr Pani's contract then Mr Pani has sufficient ground to sue for wrongful termination of contract and ask for damages.

I think Intel is trumping up the charges to cover some part of its tracks which IMHO is a dumb move without any proof to back up the case , this type of maneuvers have the talent to come around and bite back in painful ways.