Ex-Akamai Worker to Plead Guilty to Espionage for Disclosing Trade Secrets

A former employee of Akamai Technologies Inc. (AKAM) agreed to plead guilty to providing trade secrets to an undercover agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, the U.S. government said.

Elliot Doxer, 42, of Brookline, Massachusetts, will appear at a plea hearing in Boston Aug. 29 on the charge of foreign economic espionage, according to a statement by the office of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.

“Economic espionage poses a tremendous risk, not only to corporate America, but to the safety and well-being of our nation’s security,” Ortiz said in the statement.

Doxer sent an e-mail to the Israeli consulate in Boston in 2006 when he worked in Akamai’s finance department saying that he would provide any information helpful to Israel, according to the statement.

An FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer set up a site in 2007 where they could exchange communications. Doxer provided information about the company’s customers and contracts, according to the statement.

Akamai, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides services for delivering content over the Internet.

Doxer could receive a sentence of as long as 15 years in prison, prosecutors said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Don Jeffrey in New York at djeffrey1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Dunn at adunn8@bloomberg.net.