Otto Former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski
- Former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski paid someone inside Tesla to leak him information about the electric-car company's effort to develop a battery-powered semi-truck, according to a new lawsuit.
- The lawsuit was filed against Levandowski by his former nanny, who claims that Levandowski failed to pay her wages.
- The suit is the latest allegation against Levandowski, who has also been accused of stealing trade secrets developed by Google and taking them with him to Uber.
- Levandowski's representative said the suit was "frivolous."
Former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski had a mole inside Tesla who was leaking him information about its effort to develop an electric-powered semi-truck, according to a new lawsuit, which was first reported by Wired.
In the suit, filed against Levandowski by his former nanny, Erika Wong, Wong claims to have overheard multiple conversations in which Levandowski supposedly mentioned the name "Pat Green." Levandowski also frequently asked his sister about packages he expected to receive from Green, according to the suit.
In one such conversation, which Levandowski had with his business partner, Randy Miller, Levandowski mentioned Green's name in a exchange about Tesla's electric trucking division, according to the lawsuit. In another conversation, Levandowski told his stepmother, who frequently played a role in his companies, to, "make sure that Pat Green gets paid," according to the suit.
"Just arrange with Suzanna [Levandowski's stepmother], dad, and Hazlett [another relative] to keep working with Pat Green," Levandowski told his brother in a conversation last April, according to Wong's suit. "I need updates on Tesla trucking, the non-lidar technology is crucial and Nvidia chips. We can make money on both."
It's unclear who exactly "Pat Green" is, Wired noted. However, there is a Patrick Green who works as a senior manufacturing equipment engineer at Tesla, Wired reported. Green did not respond to Wired's requests for comments on the story.
In a statement to Wired, a representative for Levandowski described the suit as "frivolous." "Levandowski is confident that the lawsuit will be dismissed by the courts," the statement said.
Levandowski has been a central figure in a bombshell lawsuit Waymo, a self-driving car startup that's a sister company of Google, filed against Uber in February. Levandowski helped start Google's autonomous vehicle program, left to form a startup focused on autonomous trucks, then joined Uber. Waymo alleges in its own suit that Levandowski brought its trade secrets with him to Uber.
In her suit, Wong charges that Levandowski failed to pay her wages and violated numerous health and labor codes.
Read the full story over at Wired.
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