> how can Jawbone control what the DoJ does?

This likely started with Jawbone complaining to the authorities and then co-operating with the investigation. OP’s characterisation of these indictments as “a BS attempt by Jawbone's management to screw over a former competitor” would appear inchoate given the text of the indictments hasn’t yet been released.

There is a great deal more pettiness and personal vendetta in "prosecutorial discretion" than anyone wants to admit. I have no details on the specifics of this case, but it's certainly not a stretch to imagine that there is some back-end connection that gave a special-enough glimmer to this case for the DoJ to pursue it this way.

That's not to say there aren't people who are essentially random victims of "prosecutorial discretion". Lawyers need something to do all day, and sometimes that thing is finding people to prosecute.

There is of course the third possibility, however unlikely, that the accused engaged in truly reprehensible and brazen theft of their former employer's intellectual property, showing such wanton disregard for civil society that they deserve to be deprived of their freedom and placed in a cage for several months, and then marked as ex-cons the rest of their natural lives. I would say there's a pretty miniscule chance of this being the case, but again, I don't know any of the details.

I'm not implying Jawbone has the same influence as Goldman Sachs but corporations have heavily influenced cases (imo) like this before.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-aleynikov-f...