Thursday, November 6th 2008
Ex-Intel Employee Charged with $1 Billion for Stealing Secret Information from Intel
Stealing money has always been the easy way to earn some quick pocket change, but what about $1 Billion stolen not from anybody but from Intel itself. At the age of 33, Biswamohan Pani, now a former Intel employee, was charged today for stealing trade secrets from Intel that worth more than $1 billion. Pani was allegedly stealing trade secrets from Intel Corp.'s facility in Hudson, Mass., and downloading confidential documents from the company's offices in California. According to the indictment, Pani gave notice to leave Intel and told his superiors he was using up about a week of vacation while looking for a job at a hedge fund. In reality, he had taken a job at Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices, and while using up vacation time at Intel, was downloading valuable trade secrets. When Pani's house was searched by the FBI, they've found eight documents described by Intel as "confidential," "secret" or "top secret." Now Biswamohan Pani is facing a major sentence in prison, so he can reconsider his theft estimated for $1 billion in research and development costs. On the other side, AMD said it was not aware for any of Pani's stolen information.
Source:
Business Journal
38 Comments on Ex-Intel Employee Charged with $1 Billion for Stealing Secret Information from Intel
Edit: www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Espionage-Secrets-Stolen-AMD,6359.html Yep, back in September. Odd how there is no mention of his wife in the current press. Something tells me she isn't and Intel employee anymore.
They keep her and just give her useless staf for AMD :rolleyes:
"AMD never knew" :slap: no one steals something worth 1 Bilion just for fun?!
thats all folks
If he really did do this he deserves to be pwnd by intel.
What are you in for? Robbed a convenience store, things went bad...
What are you in for? Huge coke deal.
And what are you in for? I took information from Intel.
Ok, you're getting F'd in the A this saturday...
first off - stealing from a computer-industry company, especially one that major . . . you'd think they would have IT specialists who monitor their networks to keep the 1337 haxurz out . . .
I'm sure they noticed, 'hey, look at this IP addy logged into the system . . . that's external and not recognized by our software . . . you wanna run a trace?'
This has epci moron written all over it.
His motives? We arent sure. You know, its very very common for people to download or take copies of company documents when they leave a company. Usually, it isnt for "selling secrets", but part of someones curiosity, thirst for knowledge, but also just plain and simple knowledge bank (private library).
I guess we will never know if AMD is silent on this.
Who knows, it could even be this guy WROTE those documents himself, and just wanted to keep copies for record. Perhaps that sentiment is a stretch... but... without proof of intent, I think it is right to take him to court over copyright breachment, possibly even theft, similar to stealing books in a bookstore. But to trump up those "commerical damages" claims is WORSE THAT THE RIAA.
Intel needs to prove damage was done, and WHO perpetrated the damage. Sticking BS numbers on a guy, made up by overegoed lawyers, is the kind of stuff that DOES NOT make a good legislative system.
ANYWAY, regaring "top secret" and "confidential" etc. that is material related to people, organisations, and strategy. If this was some cool technology feature, you can bet Intel has already patented it, so WTF if it gets out in the market? No one can use it without permission and without license fee.
Someone COOK those lawyers in a frying pan, please.
Maybe if they offer him a lower sentence or cooperates he will say lol.
The only reason to steal that kind of info is to sell it. As he was working at AMD at the time, I'm calling bull* on them not knowing and offering for it. Remember he was working for them while he was downloading it.
Oh and on the comment about AMD not having better tech if they did steal it. They may not use it or they may but just having the info gives them an advantage because the know what Intels plans are. Also it would take months to develop the info into anything useable so we wouldn't see it till next year anyway.
Intel probably went *WTF!*
"Why is an AMD IP downloading our stuff?!?"
"Who's login is that??"
"Fry his ASS!"
FYI here is the link to TPU story on it back in September.