The FBI has arrested three Silicon Valley engineers for allegedly conspiring to steal trade secrets from Google and other technology companies.
They include sisters Dr Samaneh Ghandali, 41, a hardware security and cryptography expert who worked at Google until 2023, her husband Mohammad Khosravi, 40, and Samaneh's sister Soroor Ghandali, 32.
Soroor is a former Google intern whose LinkedIn profile suggests she then went to work at Intel – which is not named in an FBI statement.
The agency alleges that the three defendants “used their employment at technology companies to… [exfiltrate] trade secrets related to processor security and cryptography and other technologies, from Google and other technology companies to unauthorized third-party and personal locations, including to work devices associated with each other’s employers…”
The arrests come just 30 days after a federal jury in San Francisco convicted former Google software engineer Leon Ding, 38, on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets for stealing thousands of pages of confidential information about Google’s AI technology “for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)...”
"Google's internal security systems detected..."
A release from the Attorney's Office, Northern District of California, says “Google’s internal security systems detected Samaneh Ghandali’s activity and Google revoked her access to company resources in August 2023.”
The FBI alleged on February 19 that the three took “deliberate steps to evade detection and conceal their identities” – photographing screens rather than downloading assets and “submitting false, signed affidavits to victim technology companies about the conduct…”
Three months after Google revoked access to company resources for Ghandali, she captured photographs of her husband’s work computer screen containing an unnamed “Company 2”’s trade secret information, and travelled to Iran with him, where she accessed the files, the FBI said. Khosravi also allegedly accessed other Company 2 trade secret information.
The defendants will appear in district court today (February 20) for identification of counsel before US Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen.
All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
If convicted, each faces a maximum of 30 years in prison for conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and obstruction of official proceedings.
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