San Jose: Former Google engineer on Tuesday was charged with stealing closely guarded secrets that he later sold to Uber as the ride-hailing service scrambled to catch up in the high-stakes race to build robotic vehicles.
The indictment filed by the US Attorney's office in San Jose, California, is an offshoot of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Waymo, a self-driving car pioneer spun off from Google.
Uber agreed to pay 245 million dollars to settle the case but the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit made an unusual recommendation to open a criminal probe.
Uber considered having self-driving technology crucial for surviving.
Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer in robotic vehicles, was charged with 33 counts of trade secrets theft.
He could be sentenced up to 10 years and fined 250 thousand dollars for each charge, which could amount to more than eight million dollars.
Prosecutors say the probe is ongoing, but they wouldn't say whether Uber and former CEO Travis Kalanick are targeted.
Prosecutors said that both Google and Uber cooperated in the investigation.
Levandowski was accused of stealing years of top-secret information from Google, which prosecutors called the crown jewels of the company.
The secret documents included Google's breakthroughs in 'Lidar', a key piece of technology that enables self-driving cars to detect what's around them.
Levandowski's attorneys maintained his innocence. Prosecutors say Levandowski turned himself to the authorities on Tuesday morning.
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