A senior manager at an Apple component supplier has been charged over allegations that he illegally sold advance information about the iPad and other Apple products.
Prosecutors claim that Walter Shimoon received more than $22,000 in return for providing information for clients of Primary Global Research (PGR), an investment firm. Shimoon worked for Flextronics International, which makes, among other things, display and camera components.
Shimoon has been released on bail and will appear in New York court on 4 January. He has yet to enter a plea. Jeremy Warren, Shimoon’s lawyer, told US Magistrate Judge Bernard G. Skomal that prosecutors’ damages estimates were exaggerated as the information Shimoon provided was “only tidbits of technological data”.
Two executives at PGR have also been arrested by the FBI, as well as former executives at Dell, AMD and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, all of whom accused of insider trading and wire fraud that US Attorney Preet Bharara said ”crosses the whole country and all over the world”.
“A corrupt network of insiders at some of the world’s leading technology companies served as so-called consultants who sold out their employers by stealing and then peddling their valuable inside information,” Bharara said in a statement after the arrests.
Flextronics said that if Shimoon is guilt it will jeopardise a relationship with Apple “that can be valued in the tens of millions of dollars”.
