Apple's former engineer pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets while he was working on the Apple Car Project Titan Project.

The ex-employee of the Cupertino-based tech giant reportedly pleaded guilty to theft of trade secrets.

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This illustration picture shows the US multinational technology company Apple logo displayed on a tablet in Paris on February 18, 2019.

Apple Car's Ex-Engineer and Project Titan Trade Secrets

The ex-employee Xiaolang Zhang joined the renowned tech giant in 2015 for its project of producing autonomous vehicle hardware and software, as per the latest news story by Mac Rumors.

But after three years, the former Apple Car engineer cut ties with the Cupertino giant in favor of a China-based electric vehicle startup, known as Xpeng.

The former engineer at Apple's Project Titan is reportedly one of the folks under the Compute Team.

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The logo of US tech giant Apple can be seen on an Apple store in Munich, southern Germany.

It appears that Zhang was responsible for developing the circuit boards, which analyze sensor data for the autonomous vehicle project of the iPhone maker.

And while the former engineer was working on the Apple Car project, Mac Rumors reports that the tech giant gave him access to its database of confidential files.

When Zhang left Apple last April 2018, the tech behemoth, later on, discovered that its former engineer had gotten away with its confidential data for Project Titan.

Apple vs. Ex-Project Titan Employee

According to a recent report by The Verge, the tech giant discovered that one of its former employees had stolen roughly 24GB of what it describes as "highly problematic" data.

It turns out that Zhang transferred the files using the file-sharing feature of Apple, AirDrop, to the MacBook of the wife of the ex-Apple engineer.

On top of that, the Cupertino firm also learned that its former engineer took home circuit boards and a server at the Project Titan lab.

And as such, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) brought the former Apple employees, charging Zhang with theft of trade secrets.

Mac Rumors notes in the same report that the FBI arrested the former Apple employee after he tried to escape the country.

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Ex-Engineer Admits Stealing Apple Trade Secrets

And this time, Zhang has already pleaded guilty to theft of Apple trade secrets while he was still working on its autonomous vehicle project.

To be more precise, The Verge states that the former employee has pled guilty to a single heft of trade secrets count.

It is worth noting, though, that the plea agreement of Zhang has yet to be known to the public.

But the US law states that such a move could sentence the former Apple engineer to up to 10 years of imprisonment.

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Written by Teejay Boris