Former Google, Uber Engineer Gets 18 Months For Stealing Secrets

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – A former engineer at Google and Uber pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing confidential information from Google's self-driving car program and received an 18-month prison sentence, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Anthony Scott Levandowski, 40, pleaded guilty to one of the 33 counts of trade secrets theft originally filed against him in 2019. In addition to his sentence, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered Levandowski to pay a $95,000 fine and $756,499.22 in restitution.

Levandowski, a Marin County resident, worked in Google's self-driving car program from 2009 to 2016 before leaving for Uber. When he left, he downloaded about 14,000 files about the program to his laptop.