An ex-employee of the Web content company Akamai will plead guilty to charges of foreign economic espionage.
Federal prosecutors say he gave company trade secrets to an undercover FBI agent pretending to be an Israeli intelligence officer.
According to the Associated Press, Elliot Doxer, 42, will acknowledge that he provided trade secrets from Akamai Technologies Inc. over an 18-month span to the agent, whom he thought was an Israeli spy, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts said in a statement.
Like most white collar criminals, he will get the chance for a plea deal; the plea hearing is scheduled for Aug 29.
Thomas J. Butters, Doxer’s attorney, did not return messages left after the close of business Thursday.
Doxer worked in Akami’s finance department when he executed the alleged misdeeds. Authorities said he sent an email to the Israeli consulate in June 2006 and offered to give up any information he could get his hands on to help out that country in return for $3,000.
Doxer stated that his main objective was “to help our homeland and our war against our enemies,” prosecutors said.
Israeli representatives communicated with U.S. officials about the offer. An FBI agent went undercover and masqueraded as an Israeli agent in September 2007, and set up a “dead drop” site to trade information with Doxter to elude detection.
From that point until March 2009, Doxter went to the drop location 62 times and delivered an extensive list of Akamai’s clients and employees, which contained their complete contact information, and contract details, according to prosecutors.
In addition, he allegedly provided details about Akamai’s physical and computer security systems and said he could to go Israel and help special operations in his local area if necessary.
Earlier Akamai had said that it cooperated with the FBI. The company also made it clear that there is no evidence that Doxer actually gave information to a foreign government.
Doxer was apprehended in August and he was charged with wire fraud. That charge will be dropped because of the plea agreement.
A charge of espionage comes with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a degrading three-year term of supervised release and a hefty $500,000 fine.
