It's hard to believe an Apple employee could have no common sense. But your explanation is still the least unbelievable. So I think you're right.

Then the story is like this. The guy knew it's wrong to take stuff, but hoped nobody would notice. Told his former boss about the new job because why not.

Then Apple security team called, he got scared enough to tell them everything, but not scared enough to leave for China or at least get a lawyer. He even voluntarily gave his wife's computer to them. Maybe he thought it would ok if he was cooperating with them?

Then later, the FBI got involved at the end of June. He finally got seriously scared, bought tickets to China, but by then FBI was already monitoring his movements.

It would be interesting to see his side of the story.

I mean he already made like 1000 mistakes, but he really should've driven to mexico and flown out of there.

Omg it's just too funny because it's so irrelevant to the main story and yet you're absolutely right.

Even after the poor sod fought so hard to win the techie version of the Darwin award, he still could have made it to safety. If only he stopped for a moment to think about what he did wrong and learned from his mistakes.

It's like watching a movie with a horrible plot.

People make mistake when they are under pressure, how do you know that guy wasn't being blackmailed, and someone or something threatened to harm his family if he didn't do it?

And perhaps he also got some assurance from the Chinese intelligence services and thought he could just run to the embassy. Just speculating. But it wouldn't be the first time China (or any other country) uses their nationals to ex-filtrate IP.

While it certainly happened in the past, I don't think it's the case there - the guy tried to cooperate with Apple. I also don't think that he's so morally corrupt that he'd cooperate with Chinese intelligence services and still keep thinking he's doing nothing wrong (as was suggested as reasoning of his behavior in another thread).

any company that values its IP/client lists/etc will (should) run an "activity log" over any employee who hands in their notice, typically for the 3-6 months preceeding the date of handing in notice.

Some poor sap then gets to scroll through it and see if anything looks odd. If it does, they ask someone with more context to have a look.

There is no excuse for expecting this kind of thing would go unnoticed, beyond simply assuming your employer is an idiot.

> It could be that it simply never occured to him that he would get caught

It never occurred to him that copy company data is wrong.

I don't understand how you can blame him and call someone a "dumbass" for being honest.

It looks like the dumbasses are Apple project managers, or Apple lawyers, or Apple security admins or whoever write Apple's policies

Are you a dumbass if you are honest? No. Are you a dumbass if you steal and then honestly tell that you did it? Yes. Now don’t get me wrong, all criminals are bad. But you have to admit that there is a difference between smart criminals and dumb ones. This person was a dumb criminal. Likely due to him not even contemplating that what he was doing was criminal, in-line with shoplifters who will tell you: “No it’s ok to eat the fruit inside the store, as long as it’s gone before you get to the counter you don’t have to pay”

Following your argument, Apple could be a very smart criminal organization that doesn't get caught.

Should we investigate further on Apple to make sure?

Edit : by the way, that guy could have been blackmailed. Someone may have said "If you don't do it, we will harm your family". We shouldn't be judging someone without investigating all the elements, especially when an individual takes the risk of facing a gigantic organization. It should rings bells to everyone.

It is naive/lacking common sense to think always being honest is smart.

It depends of your believes. You can't prove that always being honest is not smart.

Children and fools always speak the truth.