Federal prosecutors unveiled fraud and money-laundering charges this week against a former Qualcomm research engineer and three others for allegedly duping the San Diego company into paying $150 million to acquire technology that it putatively owned already.
A federal grand jury handed up the indictment in May, but it was unsealed on Monday. It alleges the quartet — including two San Diego residents — choreographed a scheme to defraud Qualcomm after ex-Vice President of Research and Development Karim Arabi came up with a faster method for evaluating micro-processors during the "design for test" process while working at the company.
Under terms of Arabi's employment agreement, intellectual property created while he was on Qualcomm's payroll belonged to the company. The indictment alleges he and others took elaborate steps to hide his involvement. They portrayed the invention as the brainchild of a Canadian graduate student, according to the indictment. It was being commercialized through a Bay Area startup.
