Former Apple Employee Steals Self-Driving Car Trade Secrets; Gets Arrested At California Airport

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested a former Apple employee that tried to transfer trade secrets of Apple's self-driving car to Xiaopeng Motors a start-up backed up by Alibaba.

A spokesperson for Apple revealed that they are working with authorities on the matter and will do everything possible to make sure Xiaolang Zhang and other individuals pay dearly for their actions.

Xiaolang Zhang was an engineer who worked on Apple's self-driving car project, and was caught on CCTV on April 28th leaving the the company's autonomous vehicle lab when he was supposed to be on leave, carrying a computer keyboard, some cables, and a large box. He was investigated to this extent when he asked for a resignation so that he could spend time with his ailing mother in China and also work for an electric car start-up.

Zhang's phones and laptop was confiscated, and it was discovered that days before his attempted resignation, majority of his activity was bulk searches and targeted downloading of information about the self-driving car project.

The FBI was alerted by Apple of their findings, then they investigated and found out more evidence that Zhang had even air dropped 40GB of data to his wife's laptop which the forensic teams said was a very huge challenge.

Zhang was on his way to Beijing on the 7th of July when he was arrested at the security checkpoint at the San Jose International Airport.