Former Intel Employee Pleads Guilty to Data Theft

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36-year Biswamohan Pani old has pleaded guilty of stealing chip design documents valued at several hundred million dollars from his former employer Intel.

The engineer quit his job at Intel on June 11 of 2008, but joined AMD on June 2, while he was still able to access Intel's servers. Pani downloaded "numerous" confidential documents that were originally estimated to be worth about $1 billion, but were tagged by Intel with a value of about $200 to $400 million later on. The engineer apparently intended to advance his career by bringing the documents to AMD.

AMD was said to have cooperated with the investigation. According to the FBI, there is no evidence that anyone at AMD knew that Pani had the information and there were no signs that anyone at AMD asked Pani for the documents. Sentencing is scheduled for August 8. Each count of fraud carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Douglas Perry
Douglas Perry
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.