On Friday, the company said that within three days of his appointment, software engineer Alex Khatilov brazenly stole thousands of commercial computer scripts that Tesla took years to develop and move to his Dropbox, a cloud storage service.
San Francisco, USA:
Tesla is suing a former employee for allegedly stealing around 26,000 secret files in his first week with the company, consistent with the court file seen by AFP.
On Friday, the company said that within three days of his appointment, software engineer Alex Khatilov brazenly stole thousands of commercial computer scripts that Tesla took years to develop and move to his Dropbox, a cloud storage service.
Tesla said that when he was confronted by the security team at Tesla, Khatilov claimed that he had only transferred "a few personal administrative documents," while trying to delete the evidence.
Khatilov told the New York Post that the program files accidentally ended up in Dropbox when he was trying to back up a folder on his computer.
Tesla said the files, which represented "200 years of work for a man," were so valuable to both the company and its competitors that they could provide "a roadmap for replicating Tesla's innovation."
She said that Khatilov's team consists of a handful of Tesla employees - 40 out of 50,000 - who have access to the texts, but who "have nothing to do with his responsibilities."
Tesla's security team discovered the file's downloads on January 6, after Khatilov was hired on December 28, and encountered him over a video call while he was working from home, according to the court filing.
Tesla said, Khatilov was late sharing his screen with the team, and during that time "he could be seen on video chat hastily deleting information from his computer."
However, investigators were still able to see the thousands of secret files uploaded to his Dropbox, which Khatilov "claimed he somehow forgot."
Khatilov, who told the New York Post that he did not know he would be sued until the newspaper called him on Friday, was fired the same day.
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