An uproar erupted in Silicon Valley after three engineers from San Jose, California, were charged with stealing trade secrets from Google and other semiconductor companies and transferring the sensitive information to Iran.
Samaneh Ghandali, 41, her sister Soroor Ghandali, 32, and Mohammad Khosravi, 40, all engineers in Silicon Valley, were arrested Thursday and immediately brought before a federal court in San Jose. According to the indictment, all three are Iranian citizens. Soroor is in the United States on a student visa, Samaneh is a US citizen and her husband, Khosravi, is a lawful permanent resident.
Prosecutors allege the three exploited their positions at leading technology companies to obtain hundreds of confidential files, including materials related to processor security and cryptography. The sisters previously worked at Google, while the third defendant was employed by another technology company. According to the indictment, he previously served in Iran’s military.
Google said the theft of trade secrets was detected through routine security monitoring. Prosecutors allege the defendants routed stolen files through a third-party communication platform to channels bearing their first names before copying the material to personal devices, their respective work devices and to Iran. They allegedly attempted to cover their tracks after Google’s internal security systems flagged Samaneh’s activity and revoked her access to company resources in August 2023.
According to the indictment, Samaneh signed an affidavit falsely claiming she had not shared Google’s confidential information outside the company. During that period, she and Khosravi used a personal laptop to search for methods of deleting correspondence and to research how long cellular providers retain message records. The couple is also accused of photographing hundreds of computer screens containing confidential information from Google and another technology company.
Prosecutors allege that on the night before the couple traveled to Iran in December 2023, Samaneh photographed about 24 images from Khosravi’s work computer screen containing trade secrets of a technology company. While they were in Iran, a device linked to Samaneh had access to the photographs, and Khosravi had access to additional proprietary information belonging to the same company.
Prosecutors noted in the indictment that the trade secrets of one of the companies had independent economic value because they were not publicly known and could not be readily obtained by competitors. If convicted, each of the three faces up to 10 years in prison for theft of trade secrets and up to 20 years for obstruction of justice.