found guilty<\/a>\u00a0of hiding his role in the invention of a new microchip technology, as well as his part in a start-up company that sold the technology to Qualcomm.<\/p>\nProsecutors said the one-time vice president of research and development\u2019s employment agreement held that any inventions he created would belong to Qualcomm. Arabi\u2019s attorneys, however, had argued that provision in his employment agreement was not enforceable under California law.<\/p>\n
The technology sold to Qualcomm was purportedly invented by Arabi\u2019s sister, Sheida Alan, but prosecutors alleged Arabi was the true inventor and also impersonated his sister in communications related to the start-up company behind the technology, Abreezio.<\/p>\n
When Abreezio had to file new patent applications that would feature the inventor\u2019s name, Arabi\u2019s sister legally changed her last name from Arabi to Alan to hide her connection to her brother, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Qualcomm paid $150 million of the total purchase price before discovering the fraud. After the sale, which saw nearly $92 million go to Arabi\u2019s sister, prosecutors said Arabi laundered the money to further conceal his involvement.<\/p>\n
The Abreezio sale also resulted in Qualcomm filing a civil lawsuit against Arabi and his sister. The siblings reached a settlement with Qualcomm in which they agreed to pay more than $47 million to the company.<\/p>\n
A San Diego federal jury convicted Arabi in April of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges. Along with prison, he was ordered to pay over $100 million in restitution, along with his co-defendants.<\/p>\n
Arabi apologized in court during his sentencing hearing, saying, \u201cI violated the trust of everyone who considered me a mentor, a leader and a role model.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Qualcomm executive who was convicted of scheming to defraud the San Diego tech giant out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,1995,21402,74,1856,1857,1858,76,75,1855],"class_list":["post-28633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-inc","tag-qualcomm-technologies","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-celebrities","tag-san-diego-concerts","tag-san-diego-events","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}