Headaches for Uber as Executives Keep Breaking the Law
Posted on 08/21/2020
With stringent California labor laws on the classification of employees, Uber Technologies and Lyft, Inc. recently halted service in the Golden state. Labor regulations are not the only worry for ride-sharing services.
Revealed in August 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice said that Anthony Scott Levandowski pleaded guilty and was sentenced today to 18 months in prison for trade secret theft related to Google’s self-driving car program. Levandowski was also ordered to pay a US$ 95,000 fine and US$ 756,499.22 in restitution. The Marin County resident Levandowski pleaded guilty to one of the 33 counts of trade secrets theft originally filed against him in 2019. In pleading guilty, Levandowski admitted that from 2009 to 2016 he worked in Google’s self-driving car program, known then as Project Chauffer. In sentencing Levandowski, Judge Alsup observed “this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale.”
Obstruction of Justice Charge
In the same month, the DOJ filed a criminal complaint in federal court charging Joseph Sullivan with obstruction of justice and misprision of a felony in connection with the attempted cover-up of the 2016 hack of Uber. According to the complaint, between April 2015 and November 2017, Joseph Sullivan served as Uber’s Chief Security Officer. The press release states, “During this time, two hackers contacted Sullivan by email and demanded a six-figure payment in exchange for silence. The hackers ultimately revealed that they had accessed and downloaded an Uber database containing personally identifying information, or PII, associated with approximately 57 million Uber users and drivers. The database included the drivers’ license numbers for approximately 600,000 people who drove for Uber. The criminal complaint alleges that Sullivan took deliberate steps to conceal, deflect, and mislead the Federal Trade Commission about the breach.”
Corporate cover-ups and illegal hush money payments are risks for corporations. Uber had been hacked in September of 2014. Rather than report the 2016 data breach ,the DOJ asserts Sullivan allegedly took deliberate steps to prevent knowledge of the breach from reaching the FTC.
