An ex-Meta veep has been sued by his former bosses for “overtly disloyal and dishonest conduct” – and by that, they imply he allegedly stole confidential paperwork to assist him construct and recruit colleagues for an AI cloud startup.
Over the course of his 12-year employment on the Fb large, Dipinder Singh Khurana – often known as T.S. Khurana – rose to the rank of vice-president of infrastructure. He left the mega-corp in June 2023 to take a place as senior veep of supply-chain operations at a startup nonetheless in stealth mode and never named within the lawsuit in opposition to him.
After telling Meta bosses he deliberate to depart, Khurana allegedly used his remaining time on the company to steal “a trove of proprietary, extremely delicate, confidential, and personal paperwork about Meta’s enterprise and staff,” Meta claimed in a grievance filed in a northern California state courtroom.
These paperwork included delicate inner particulars of Meta’s “information facilities, suppliers, distributors, and artificial-intelligence packages,” the biz alleged on the finish of final month. It went on to say:
“Khurana was handsomely compensated,” Meta continued in its grievance. “However … that was not sufficient.” Regardless of that fats pay package deal and VP title, Khurana could have failed to contemplate the extent of monitoring or logging that goes on inside Meta’s networks, if the lawsuit’s allegations are right.
“Khurana not solely uploaded Meta’s paperwork to his private Google Drive and Dropbox accounts, however he uploaded quite a few of those paperwork into folders bearing the identify of his new employer,” Meta alleged. In keeping with the Instagram titan, the veep transferred information from Meta methods to these exterior cloud accounts.
As alleged above, among the many paperwork Khurana apparently took to share along with his startup had been provider and vendor contracts, planning paperwork, payroll and recruiting information, compensation and efficiency information, enterprise operations paperwork, and data regarding Meta’s provide chain operations and staff.
One of many key paperwork cited within the grievance is an inner “Prime Expertise” spreadsheet that Meta stated it had cause to consider was transferred from its methods to Khurana’s work laptop at his new firm, an outfit described by Meta as “in search of to offer AI cloud computing providers at scale, together with by designing and developing information facilities.”
Shortly after leaving, Meta alleges, a number of of Khurana’s Meta-mates had been contacted by the exec and his upstart to debate positions at this new firm.
“A minimum of eight staff which can be listed within the ‘Prime Expertise’ spreadsheet left Meta to affix Khurana’s new employer between June and November 2023,” Meta expenses within the grievance.
“Meta is knowledgeable and believes that at the very least a few of these departures possible resulted from Khurana’s disclosure and/or use of private info,” the Fb guardian added. Further Meta-mates had been additionally contacted about jobs with Khurana’s new employer, however it’s not clear whether or not they accepted, we’re instructed.
Meta has leveled 5 expenses in opposition to Khurana: Breach of contract, breach of the obligation of loyalty, breach of fiduciary obligation, unjust enrichment, and breaking California’s laptop crime legal guidelines. The Fb goliath is asking that Khurana be compelled to pay damages and disgorge any cash or advantages he obtained because of his alleged stealing of firm secrets and techniques. Meta’s allegations have but to be answered in courtroom by Khurana or his legal professionals.
“Meta takes this sort of egregious misconduct significantly. We’ll proceed working to guard confidential enterprise and worker info,” a Meta spokesperson instructed The Register. We reached out to Khurana as effectively, and have not heard again but. ®
