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FBI accuses Indian techie of filching Intel secrets
By siliconindia
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Saturday, 08 November 2008, 17:33 IST |
9 Comments
Bangalore: Biswamohan Pani, an Indian techie, has been brought under the legal books by FBI, after Intel alleged him of stealing trade secrets. Pani faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted for theft of trade secrets and 20 years on each his four counts of wire fraud.
This ex-design engineer for Intel's Itanium chips, who has recently shifted to the chipmaker AMD is claimed to have stolen eight sensitive documents from Intel's Massachusetts facility while burning away his accrued vacation after resigning. As per managers of Intel, he was leaving the company because a hedge fund "showed some interest" in letting him handle their "multi-million $ accounts" and might "dabble in that for a few months." But in reality, Pani had already been offered a job at AMD months earlier and had agreed to start there just four days after his resignation, court documents claim. During the vacation and the payroll of both AMD and Intel, prosecutors claim that Pani used his Intel-issued laptop to access the company's computer network and download sensitive documents, since his access to the firm's secret documents was not terminated immediately.
Intel also claimed that only on the last day of his work, he revealed that he is employed with the rival AMD and reaffirmed his confidentiality obligations and told managers he had returned all the property of the company. But later, through a secretly-made copy of his Intel laptop, he allegedly tried to get into the network, which turned futile due to the encryption and the special security checks included in the process.
However, AMD is not accused of any misconduct. "The FBI has stated that there is no evidence that AMD had any involvement in or awareness of Mr. Pani's alleged actions," said AMD spokesman Michael Silverman.
