Former Apple employee charged with stealing self-driving car technology. The charges came nearly five years after he fled to China, BBC reports..

Prosecutors accuse Weibao Wang of stealing thousands of files that contained confidential information. It is noted that at the time of the theft, he was secretly working for a Chinese company.. In total, he was charged with six counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets..

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BBC notes that this is the third time that a former Apple employee has been accused of stealing technology in favor of China.. The US Department of Justice is confident that Wang stole documents that contained the source code for the software and hardware of unmanned systems..

They noted that Wang joined Apple in 2016, he joined the team that developed autonomous systems.. He signed a confidentiality agreement for the project, about which little was known at the time.. In 2018, Wang left the company.

U.S. Attorney's Office alleges that four months before he was fired, he, secretly from Apple, accepted an offer to work as an engineer at another company.. The name of the company is not given in the indictment, but prosecutors say it is based in China..

Law enforcement raided Wang's home in California in 2018 while he was living there.. The engineer assured them that he was not going to leave the US, but bought a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Guangzhou in China the same day.. An analysis of the devices found at Wang's home showed that he kept a large number of Apple files about self-driving car technology..

Wang is currently in China. If extradited and convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

Apple declined to comment on this information.. Two other employees of the company faced similar charges.. One of them, Xiaolang Zhang, pleaded guilty in a San Jose court last year.. He was arrested in 2018 while trying to board a flight to China..

Last year, the US Department of Commerce introduced new export controls on advanced computer and semiconductor components to prevent China from purchasing them.. Also, the United States and a coalition of 37 countries imposed export controls on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine..