Tesla accuses a former employee of stealing 26,000 confidential files between his hiring on December 28, 2020 and his dismissal for these facts a week later, and filed a complaint on Friday in a court in California.
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Banned downloads were spotted on January 6, 2021, and this computer engineer, who was teleworking due to the Covid, assured that they were only personal administrative files, according to this complaint consulted by AFP.
But Tesla, who explains that he immediately summoned him by videoconference when the downloads were reported, also accuses this former employee of having sought to destroy the evidence.
Evidence erased
The group ensures that during this interview, the engineer refused to give access to his computer, and "
could be seen (...) rushing to erase information from his computer
", details the complaint.
The man then, at the request of Tesla officials who had summoned him, identified on the Dropbox site, which allows online file storage.
"
This revealed that the same confidential Tesla files seen on his laptop were still available through his cloud storage account
," further indicates the complaint filed by the electric vehicle manufacturer.
Downloads began on December 31, 2020, and lasted until January 4, 2021, with "
additional
"
downloads
on January 6, according to Tesla.
The downloaded files "
have nothing to do with its responsibilities
", and relate to the automation of certain manufacturing and marketing processes, which could be useful to a competitor "
to create a similar automated system in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the money Tesla spent to build it
”.
Read also: Why Tesla is so expensive on the stock market
"
After discovering the theft (...) of Tesla's trade secrets, and because of his lying and repeated cover-ups during the investigation, Tesla fired (the engineer) the same day
", is it still precise.
He explained to the
New York Post that he
had transferred these documents to his Dropbox by mistake.
