Ex-Google Engineer Levandowski’s Jump to Uber Ends in Prison
- Prosecution over a defection both ‘spectacular and secretive’
- Guilty plea and litigation leave engineer a bankrupted felon
Anthony Levandowski
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
Autonomous driving engineer Anthony Levandowski was ordered to spend 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from Google as he defected to Uber Technologies Inc., in one of the highest-profile criminal cases to hit Silicon Valley.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco imposed the sentence Tuesday after Levandowski pleaded for mercy and prosecutors said anything short of locking him up would render similar crimes by future engineers a mere cost of doing business. Alsup subtracted nine months from what government lawyers wanted, and said the engineer should serve his term only once the coronavirus has been wiped away from prisons.