Sanjiv Taneja, one in all three males indicted final yr after ripping off chipmaker Qualcomm for greater than $150 million, and the previous CEO of a startup firm named Abreezio, pleaded responsible final Thursday to one rely of cash laundering involving a $1.5 million transaction. The funds have been associated to the $150 million that Taneja and the opposite defendants conned out of Qualcomm.
Arabi was nonetheless a Qualcomm worker when the corporate was negotiating with the startup and was nonetheless there when Qualcomm agreed to buy it. Qualcomm needed the startup in order that it may purchase the technology that Arabi had created at Qualcomm; in different phrases, the chipmaker was shopping for its own technology. Qualcomm was instructed that the startup was funded by angel buyers; these are rich people who assist fund a small firm in change for fairness within the agency. Qualcomm agreed to pay $180 million for Abreezio with $150 million paid in money upfront.
Qualcomm was tricked into agreeing to pay $180 million for technology it technically owned
Qualcomm did not know that its own worker had created the technology it purchased as a result of it was instructed {that a} Canadian graduate pupil working for the startup had invented it. The pupil was “performed” by Arabi’s youthful sister and she or he was listed because the inventor on provisional patents regardless that her brother filed the patent functions utilizing pretend e mail accounts to conceal his id.
Acting U.S. Attorney Andrew R. Haden stated, “Fraud and deceit undermine official companies and {the marketplace}, whether or not they victimize small companies or multinational companies and their shareholders. This workplace will search justice towards wrongdoers, massive and small alike.”