A former Intel engineer entered a guilty plea in federal court on Thursday to the felony of stealing and disclosing trade secrets for the advantage of his new company and himself.
From July 2010 to January 17, 2020, Varun Gupta was employed at Intel as a product marketing engineer. He then departed to work for Microsoft.
He flew back to Oregon to submit a plea before U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio in Portland, while he is still enrolled in graduate school in France.
According to his guilty deal, Gupta, now 44, broke an Intel trade secret agreement in January 2020 while still working for the business by using a personal USB drive to connect to his laptop and downloaded over 180 files that contained Intel trade secrets.
According to the plea agreement he signed, on his last day at Intel, he moved roughly 3,900 electronic files—many of which were proprietary documents—from his company-issued computer to a second personal hard drive.
According to the agreement, he started working for Microsoft four days later and over the course of seven months gained access to Intel trade secrets pertaining to pricing and customized product design for large purchases of computer processors, including while acting as a Microsoft representative during head-to-head negotiations with Intel.
According to the guilty deal, he accessed 179 documents while working for Microsoft, moved eight proprietary Intel documents to his Microsoft-issued computer in February 2020, and connected a hard drive containing Intel data to his Microsoft-issued computer more than 100 times.
According to the agreement, he also had access to a private Intel PowerPoint presentation that included a business analysis for one of the company’s biggest clients and a significant rival of Gupta’s new firm.
When Gupta returns for sentencing on August 12, the government will request an eight-month jail term, according to Willam M. Narus, Oregon’s acting U.S. attorney.
At the hearing, defense lawyers David Angeli and Joanna Perini-Abbott may make the case for a lighter sentence.
Narus stated that he would not ask for compensation at sentencing, despite Intel spending over $280,000 on legal fees to look into and deal with the theft of its property. But, he argued, Intel may ask to be reimbursed.
In order to await punishment, Gupta was permitted to stay out of detention.
According to the government, Gupta poses little chance of not appearing in court again. Gupta has had the chance to study abroad and has collaborated with the government, according to Narus.
“Gupta could be arrested, extradited, and lose a very favorable resolution of the case if he doesn’t return to face sentencing,” Narus informed the judge.
In mid-July 2021, Intel also secured a judge’s order directing Gupta to abide by his employment contract and prohibiting him from utilizing or revealing any of Intel’s proprietary secrets. He was required to pay Intel at least $100,000 if he broke any of its provisions or the judge’s 2021 ruling. Additionally, in 2021, Gupta admitted to stealing the chipmaker’s trade secrets and settled a civil lawsuit that Intel had brought against him.
— Maxine Bernstein writes about criminal justice and federal courts. You can contact her via [email protected], 503-221-8212, X@maxoregonian, or LinkedIn.
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