Anthony Levandowski, a founding engineer of Google's self-driving project (internally called Project Chauffeur, later Waymo), was sentenced on August 4, 2020 to 18 months in federal prison for stealing trade secrets after downloading thousands of files before leaving Google in early 2016 to found the autonomous-trucking startup Otto, which Uber acquired roughly eight months later. The U.S. Attorney charged him in August 2019 with 33 counts of trade-secret theft; under a March 2020 plea deal he pleaded guilty to one count tied to the "Chauffeur Weekly Update," a spreadsheet of quarterly goals, weekly metrics, OKRs, and summaries of 15 technical challenges that he admitted downloading to his personal laptop on or about January 17, 2016 and accessing after his resignation about ten days later. At sentencing Judge William Alsup rejected home confinement, saying it would "give a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets," and ordered $756,499.22 in restitution to Waymo plus a $95,000 fine. Parallel civil proceedings produced a Waymo–Uber settlement that included roughly $244.8 million in Uber equity (0.34% at a $72 billion valuation), while a Google arbitration award of $179 million against Levandowski forced him into bankruptcy. He was pardoned by President Trump on January 20, 2021.

Sources

• -https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/04/anthony-levandowski-sentenced-to-18-months-in-prison-as-new-4b-lawsuit-against-uber-is-filed/