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- Tesla filed a complaint on Friday accusing an engineer of stealing trade secrets.
- Tesla said engineer Alex Khatilov was hired on December 28 and started transferring files within days.
- Alex Khatilov denies the charges, according to reports.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Tesla, in a court file on Friday, said a software engineer uploaded around 26,000 confidential documents, including trade secrets, to his personal Dropbox during his first week at the company.
Alex Khaitov, a senior software quality assurance engineer, started his job at Tesla on December 28, 2020 and almost immediately began downloading sensitive files, according to Tesla.
“Within three days of being hired by Tesla, the defendant brazenly stole thousands of trade secret computer scripts that took Tesla years to develop,” Tesla said in a complaint filed Friday at the San Division. Jose of the District Court for the Northern District of California.
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Tesla sues Khaitov, accusing him of stealing trade secrets and confidential information, as well as breaking his contract. Khatilov was fired when inside investigators discovered the file transfers, according to Tesla.
Alex Khatilov denies the charges, according to a MailOnline report.
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Khatilov became the last person in Silicon Valley to be accused of stealing thefts of Te lsa trade secrets. Former Tesla employees working at Zoox were sued in 2019.
In March 2020, Tesla sued a competitor, Rivian, claiming that its employees also stole trade secrets. And Martin Tripp, a former Tesla process technician, had to pay the company $ 400,000 for sharing trade secrets, according to a December court filing.
According to Tesla, only about 40 people of Khatilov’s team of quality assurance engineers had access to the trade secrets he is accused of stealing. Within that group, only 8 engineers could grant access to files, the company said.
The company said it detected Khatilov downloads on January 6.
Khatilov gave company investigators access to his Dropbox, saying he only transferred “a few personal administrative documents,” according to Tesla.
Tesla said his investigators checked his Dropbox account. They discovered that his “claims were true lies,” claiming that he had transferred “thousands and thousands” of computer scripts from Tesla to his personal Dropbox.
Tesla said: “Then he lied about it and tried to suppress the evidence of his theft when he was quickly confronted by Tesla’s security team, forcing Tesla to file a complaint.”
The company said Khatilov told company investigators he “forgot” the files, adding that it was “almost certainly another lie”.
Khatilov spoke to the New York Post on Friday, saying, “I’ve been working for, about 20 years in this industry, and I know what sensitive documents are all about, and I’ve never, ever tried to ‘access it, or steal it. “
The Post said Khatilov learned of his journalist’s trial. An interview request sent by Insider to Khatilov’s personal email address was not immediately returned on Saturday.
In his filing, Tesla said he asked Khatilov to delete the files he could see in his Dropbox account. But the company couldn’t be sure the engineer hadn’t already transferred them elsewhere.
Tesla said: “Indeed, as soon as the defendant uploaded the stolen files to his Dropbox account, he could have shared or re-transferred these files to anyone or to any other storage medium (whether it was (an external USB drive, another computer, mobile device, or other cloud-based storage system). And Tesla would have had no way of knowing that. “
The company said investigators had to interview Khatilov remotely because of COVID-19, which meant they were unable to “guarantee the complete removal” of his devices.
The company is seeking a jury trial and damages.
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