A former Apple Inc. engineer has been charged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for stealing confidential information from the company’s autonomous vehicle project.

The accused, named Xiaolang Zhang, was employed by Apple in December 2015 to work on Project Titan, Apple’s self-driving car project, where he was given the job of designing and testing circuit boards to analyze sensor data.

Seemingly a decent worker with no reported issues, Zhang informed Apple after a period of paternity leave in April that he intended to resign because he wanted to return to China to be with his family. That by itself rang no alarm bells, but in a case of bumbling ineptitude, he also let slip that he was seeking employment at Guangzhou Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co. Ltd., an autonomous vehicle manufacturer backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. That immediately raised concern among his direct line managers.

Apple’s New Product Security Team was tasked with undertaking an investigation into Zhang’s activities at Apple, and it didn’t take them long to discover that he had not only been accessing confidential and proprietary Apple technology but had been downloading it as well, all in the time leading up to his resignation.

According to the FBI indictment, first reported by Macrumors today, “the majority of his activity consisted of both bulk searches and targeted downloading copious pages of information from various confidential database applications. The information contained within the download contained trade secret intellectual property, based on the level of Zhang’s access within Apple’s autonomous vehicle team.”

Zhang subsequently confessed to the theft in a series of interviews. Seeing the writing on the wall, he attempted to flee to China but got no further than San Jose International Airport, where he was arrested July 7.

“We’re working with authorities on this matter and will do everything possible to make sure this individual and any other individuals involved are held accountable for their actions,” Apple said in a statement.

There’s no suggestion that Xiaopeng Motors or Alibaba was involved in or even aware of Zhang’s plans, but the tale does call into question Apple’s internal security processes. The investigation found that Zhang had downloaded large amounts of data in the days prior to his resignation. That was out of character for the rest of his time at Apple, which by itself should have been a trigger warning for internal security operations.

Zhang is being held in custody pending a court hearing. Should he be found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Image: Apple