March 7 (UPI) — A Chinese national who worked at Google is accused of stealing artificial intelligence technology from the Internet behemoth for two China-based companies that he was secretly employed by, including one he founded, according to a federal indictment.
Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, was arrested Thursday morning by the FBI at his Newark, Calif., home, as a federal indictment was unsealed charging the 38-year-old with four counts of trade secrets theft.
If convicted, Ding faces a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count.
Ding was hired by Google as software engineer in 2019 to work on AI technology that controls Google’s super computing data centers.
The court document accuses Ding of stealing more than 500 unique files from Google’s networks between May 2022 and May of last year.
According to U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey, the information Ding is accused of stealing relates to both Google’s hardware infrastructure and AI software platform.
“Generally, the information concerns the technology that allows Google’s supercomputing data centers to train large AI models through machine learning,” Ramsey said in a video statement.
Court documents state that less than a month after he first began stealing the information in May 2022, Ding was courted by Chinese early-stage technology company Beijing Rongshu Lianzhi Technology Co. via email, offering him the position of chief technology officer, the court document states.
Late that October, Ding is accused of traveling to China where he stayed until March 25 of last year. While there, Ding allegedly participated in investor meetings to raise capital for Rongshu as its CTO.
Ding is also accused of founding Shanghai Zhisuan Technology Co. for which he served as chief executive officer. Ramsey said one goal his company was to replicate and upgrade the Google platform that uses technology he stole.
Prosecutors said Ding would uploaded the data he stole to an account he controlled by employing methods that evaded the Google’s data loss prevention systems — that is until early December when he allegedly uploaded files from Google’s network while in China that set off alarm bells.
Ding told a Google investigator that he uploaded the files to his personal account to use “as evidence of the work that he had conducted at Google,” the court document states.
He also reassured the investigator that he had no intention of leaving the company, though days later he bought a one-way ticket that was to depart San Francisco to Beijing on Jan. 7, according to prosecutors.
On Dec. 26, Ding resigned from Google.
Prosecutors said that amid Google’s own investigation, it learned that Ding had presented at a conference in Beijing in late November and that several times in December he had another Google employee scan his access badge at a building where he worked to make it appear as though he were in country and not in China.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could put our national security at risk,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The case was brought as part of the Justice and Commerce’s Disruptive Technologies Strike Force, which was founded in February 2023 to protect advanced technology from being stolen by foreign adversaries.
“Let today’s announcement serve as further warning – those who would steal sensitive U.S. technology risk finding themselves on the wrong end of a criminal indictment,” Assistant Secretary Matthew S. Axelrod of the Commerce Department’s Office for Export Enforcement said in a statement.
