The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged multiple defendants in five separate cases of crimes ranging from export violations, smuggling of restricted technologies and one intellectual property case involving a former Apple employee accused of stealing source code and hardware tied to its autonomous vehicle system on the behalf of the People’s Republic of China.
The DOJ indictments were executed in partnership with its Disruptive Technology Strike Force, which was established in February. The strike force actions announced Tuesday span five separate U.S. Attorney’s offices resulted in four arrests.
The DOJ alleges that each of the cases are tied to nation-state actors separately representing Iran, China and Russia. In each of the cases the DOJ believes individuals attempted to “illicitly acquire sensitive U.S. technology to advance their authoritarian regimes and facilitate human rights abuses.”
The Disruptive Technology Strike Force is co-led by DOJ and the Commerce Department with the mission to counter hostile nation-states attempting to acquire sensitive U.S. technology. Tuesday’s strike force inditements span export violations, smuggling and theft of trade secrets.
As detailed in a May 16 DOJ, two of the cases disrupted alleged procurement networks created to help the Russian military and intelligence services, while the three other cases involved China.
In one of the cases connected with Russia, a Greek national was arrested May 9 in Paris for crimes allegedly acquiring more than 10 types of sensitive technologies on behalf of the Russian government. Dr. Nikolaos Bogonikolos, 59, of Athens, was charged in the
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