Posted on 07/15/2008 2:54:52 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
WASHINGTON - A former vice president of imaging and printing services at the Hewlett Packard Company (HP) pleaded guilty today to stealing trade secrets, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello for the Northern District of California.
Atul Malhotra, 42, of Santa Barbara, Calif., was charged on June 27, 2007, in a one count information with theft of trade secrets. According to court documents, from Nov. 17, 1997, to April 28, 2006, Malhotra was employed by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) as director of sales and business development in output management services for IBM Global Services. In pleading guilty, Malhoutra admitted that on March 15, 2006, while employed at IBM, he requested and received confidential information concerning IBM Global Services, CC Calibration Metrics. The trade secret information, marked confidential on each page, included data concerning product costs and materials that IBM used to compete in the marketplace. In providing the requested information, a pricing coordinator at IBM Global Services directed Malhotra not to distribute the information due to its sensitive nature.
In May 2006, Malhotra became a vice president of imaging and printing services for HP. According to plea documents, shortly after starting in his new position at HP, Malhotra shared IBM trade secrets with his superiors. On July 25, 2006, Malhotra sent an e-mail to an HP senior vice president with the subject, “For Your Eyes Only,” and attached the trade secret information for which he is charged with sharing. Two days later, on July 27, 2006, he sent an e-mail to another HP senior vice president with the subject, “For Your Eyes Only - confidential,” and attached the same trade secret information. The court documents also reveal that in the e-mail message, Malhotra noted that knowledge of this information would help specific HP sales teams better understand their competitors’ goals as the teams determined pricing for prospective deals.
Sentencing in this case was set for Oct. 29, 2008, by U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who accepted the plea at the federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif. At sentencing, Malhotra faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and a three-year term of supervised release. IBM and HP fully cooperated in the investigation of this case.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark L. Krotoski, presently at the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, and Susan Knight of the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, with the assistance of Paralegals Glenn Gordon and Tracey Andersen. The investigation in this case was conducted by the FBI. The California Attorney General’s Office also assisted on the case.
How did IBM find out?
It does not mention the other (receiving) VP's being charged.
This suggsts to me that they did the correct thing and turned in the ex-IBM VP.
Well since it looks like the VPs were not charged, maybe they dropped the dime on him.
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What a dope and only 42. Probably been stealing and cheating to get where he is since getting out of school.
What Atul.
I'm guessing the employee thought this would endear himself to his new employer. Kudos to HP for doing the right thing.
Isn’t this what Volkswagen did when that Spanish guy left GM and started at VW?
It seems that the Justice Department of the Bush Administration is more concerned with protecting the business property of IBM than it is in protecting the security interests of the United States of America.
This guy faces 10 years for stealing marketing information and what do the traitors at the NY Times face for stealing Top Secret security information? Nothing.
You may recall that Bill Clinton replaced all the Federal attorneys and that was fine. Bush replaced 8 of them and the democrats threatened impeachment.
But most of those that work in the Justice Department were appointed by Bill Clinton and they are not about to prosecute the New York Times. It was likely someone from the Justice Department leaked the stuff to the New York Times.
There was a time when all federal employees served at the will of the President. But it was a REPUBLICAN Teddy Roosevelt that thought that was a bad Idea and put in civil service. Where it takes an act of congress to repremand a federal employee for not showing up for work.
95 percent of those that apply for jobs in the federal goverment are goverment and media fans. Just think of how many people who are for limited goverment and free enterprise who have a career goal of working in government.
People who love sports play for the NFL and NBA people who love goverment play for the USA Government.
People who love sports but can't play get in the sports media. Those who love goverment but can't govern get in the main stream media.
... .on March 15, 2006, while employed at IBM, he requested and received confidential information concerning IBM Global Services, CC Calibration Metrics....
....In May 2006, Malhotra became a vice president of imaging and printing services for HP.
Requests the docs in March, leaves Director job at IBM at the end of April, hired as Vice President by HP in May.
I'm not so sure that HP's hands are clean on this one.
Makes sense; thank you.
This is a common practice among big companies. A few years back someone offered a Coke formula to Pepsi, and they immediately turned him in. The alternative for the receiving company is possible financial ruin due to the resulting lawsuit, expecially if they actually leveraged the information.
LOL....!
They HP execs may have 'done the right thing' and turned Atul in, but there's also another scenario that I've seen happen -- it's the 'inadvertent distribution list on the email' scenario.
You're typing in addressees on the email, and the "auto-fill' function in your email program adds an unintended name -- maybe one of your former IBM managers, for instance.
all of a sudden, your email shows up in the wrong place.
I'm suspicious too. HP Services has done a lot of 'cherry-picking' from the IBM tree, in order to bootstrap themselves into an IBM competitor in the outsourcing services business.
I work for HP.
Nobody has higher standards of business practice than HP.
See for yourself here.
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-govConduct
I’m not just being a loyal employee when I say this.
We are required every year to take a Standards of Business Conduct course, complete with scenarios based on situations that actually took place, just like the one described in this case.
Atul was an idiot if he thought that any exec at HP would take the bait he offered.
He either didn’t take the SBC course or didn’t believe that it is taken seriously at HP.
He probably got dimed by both execs that he emailed, because if one of them didn’t dime him, he would have been fired and named as a co-defendent in the case.
The SBC covers everything from the way we treat eachother in the workplace to the way we treat our competition.
It’s all very much above board.
As a Christian, I am avery pleased to see that the very secular HP has implemented a clear Golden Rule approach to business conduct.
Palo Alto-based HP said it took swift action against Malhotra's alleged trade secret misconduct.
"The activity with which Malhotra is charged was in direct violation of clear HP policies, including HP’s standards of business conduct," said the company in a statement.
"HP detected this activity, conducted an internal investigation, terminated Malhotra from his employment, and self-reported the activity to all appropriate enforcement agencies and to IBM. HP has cooperated fully with the government’s investigation."
I have but one word to offer in response to that...Pretexting.
> I have but one word to offer in response to
> that...Pretexting.
Indeed.
But “pretexting” is against company SBC, so, after conducting their own internal investigation, HP fired the miscreants and called the cops.
HP is no more guilty of their mischief than HP is of Malhotra’s.
In both cases, SBC violations were reported, internal investigations were conducted, the crooks were fired, and the cops were called.
I agree. I too worked for HP.
I've had cause to read the policy for guidance more than once. The policy was designed not only to prevent unethical conduct but to eliminate even the appearance of unethical conduct. When in doubt, you write up the situation and inform your boss and his boss.
Not only did we periodically take a course, but we were expected to produce the manual from the course as part of regular business audits; so as to prove that we could review the information immediately if a need should arise.
btt
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