Ex-Tesla engineer charged in leak of confidential company information

A former Tesla Motors Inc. engineer posted confidential company information on a public website and released employee evaluations to other workers, information he obtained after gaining unauthorized access to his former manager’s email account, according to a federal indictment.

Nima Kalbasi, a 28-year-old Canadian citizen, has been charged with two counts of felony computer intrusion and one count of misdemeanor computer intrusion. If convicted, he could face five years in federal prison for the felony charges and one year in prison for the misdemeanor charge. He has not yet entered a plea.

Kalbasi is being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s computer hacking unit.

An attorney representing Kalbasi was not immediately available for comment.

According to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Kalbasi was a mechanical engineer for the Palo Alto-based company. After he was terminated in December, he obtained his former manager’s user name and password and accessed the manager’s email account about 297 times, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, Kalbasi posted confidential information on a public website and intended to “harm Tesla’s reputation and credibility” by making false and misleading comments.

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