Linwei Ding, Economic Espionage, California 2024

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Google Engineer Charged with Stealing Proprietary Technology

A federal grand jury has returned a superseding indictment charging Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets.

The indictment alleges that Ding, a software engineer at Google LLC, stole proprietary information related to the company’s hardware infrastructure and software platform. Ding is accused of uploading more than 1,000 unique files containing Google confidential information to his personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023.

According to the indictment, Ding affiliated himself with two Chinese-based technology companies while working at Google. He was in discussions to become the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage technology company in June 2022 and had founded his own technology company focused on machine learning by May 2023.

The indictment describes how Ding intended to benefit the Chinese government by stealing trade secrets from Google. The stolen technology relates to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that allows Google’s supercomputing data center to train and serve large models.

Ding faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $5,000,000 fine for each economic-espionage count. He also faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each trade-secret count.

The FBI is investigating the case, and the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, a joint effort between the Justice and Commerce Departments, is coordinating the action. The superseding indictment was returned on an unspecified date in 2024.

Ding’s technology company, which is not named in the indictment, is alleged to have been working on a product that would help China have computing power infrastructure capabilities on par with the international level.

Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, is a 38-year-old software engineer from the United States. He was hired by Google in 2019 and is accused of stealing trade secrets from the company.