The former software developer is accused of six counts of industrial espionage and the theft of business secrets. A piece of file system software that the 30-year-old had helped develop in secret during his time at IBM stood at the centre of the accusations.
The software engineer, who was employed at IBM starting in 2010, left the company voluntarily in 2014. Afterwards he allegedly offered the IBM software source code for sale. The potential buyers claimed they wanted to start a data storage company, but were in fact two undercover investigators from the American FBI.
In order to prepare for the simulated deal, the former IBM employee reportedly showed the FBI investigators excerpts of the source code and installed a functioning version on a small network set up for this purpose by the FBI. This made it possible for the FBI to judge the illegal origins of the software code together with an IBM expert.
The former software developer was subsequently arrested by the FBI in a hotel in White Plains outside of New York. In a conversation with the undercover investigators, he had admitted that the software came from IBM and offered to manipulate the programme code so as to mask its true origins. He now faces up to ten years in prison.
