Ex-Google engineer who stole trade secrets sentenced to nearly 12 months

A federal judge sentenced former Google engineer Linwei Ding to nearly a year in prison for stealing AI trade secrets, rejecting both the defense's request for home confinement and the probation office's recommended six-month cap.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called the six-month guideline inadequate given what he described as a systematic, brazen scheme, ordering Ding to pay over $198,000 in restitution plus a fine. Prosecutors had sought nearly six times the sentence Ding received, arguing Silicon Valley needed the deterrence.

A jury convicted Ding on all 14 counts after he downloaded roughly 14,000 pages of internal documents while allegedly building a competing company in China; the judge later tossed the economic espionage conviction for lack of evidence tying Ding to the Chinese government, a wrinkle that could complicate his planned appeal.

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