The one-way ticket

1. 01

   The day after leaving Monsanto and its subsidiary The Climate Corporation, an employee tries to fly to China on a one-way ticket.

2. 02

   While he waits to board, federal officials search him and his bags.

3. 03

   Investigators later find copies of the Nutrient Optimizer on one of his devices. It is the predictive algorithm at the heart of the companies’ farming software.

4. 04

   He flies on to China anyway. He is arrested when he returns to the US in November 2019, pleads guilty, and is sentenced to 29 months.

Source: Justice Department

1. 01

   An engineer on Apple’s self-driving car project takes paternity leave and travels to China. When he comes back he resigns, and says he plans to work for a Chinese electric vehicle company.

2. 02

   Apple cuts his network access and investigates. It finds he downloaded documents from company databases.

3. 03

   Closed-circuit cameras show him entering the labs and removing hardware, later identified as circuit boards and a Linux server, according to the complaint.

4. 04

   Federal agents arrest him at the San Jose airport, where he planned to fly to China. He pleads guilty in 2022 and is sentenced to 120 days.

Source: CNBC, Engadget

1. 01

   After a software engineer’s last day at Apple, the company reviews its access logs. They show large amounts of sensitive material accessed in the days before he left, the indictment says.

2. 02

   Law enforcement searches his home in Mountain View and finds large quantities of data taken from Apple, according to the indictment.

3. 03

   He is there for the search. He tells the agents he has no plans to travel.

4. 04

   That night he boards a flight to Guangzhou on a one-way ticket, the indictment says. He was charged in 2023. Nothing here has been proven in court.

Source: US Attorney, N.D. California