Intel has filed a lawsuit against a former software engineer, accusing him of stealing thousands of confidential company documents — including materials marked "Intel Confidential" — shortly before his official departure in July 2025. The case, reported by The Mercury News and The San Jose Spotlight, underscores growing concerns over data security amid Intel's ongoing mass layoffs.

According to court filings, the engineer, identified as Jinfeng Luo, joined Intel in 2014 and was notified on July 7, 2024, that his position would be eliminated as part of the company's restructuring. Although he received the layoff notice in 2024, his official termination date was set for July 31, 2025, giving him time to complete transition-related work.

The lawsuit says Luo first attempted to copy files from his company-issued laptop to an external storage drive about a week before he was set to leave the company, but Intel's protection mechanisms prevented him from succeeding with the transfer. He tried again three days before his final working day, this time successfully transferring data to a network-attached storage (NAS) device. Luo then allegedly spent the remainder of his time at Intel downloading as much information as he could, including confidential company assets, according to reports.

Intel's monitoring systems later detected the unauthorized data transfer, triggering an internal investigation. The company said that over the following three months, it tried repeatedly to contact Luo by phone, email, and postal mail regarding the potential data breach, but received no response. Intel has since filed a lawsuit seeking $250,000 in damages and an injunction to prevent any disclosure or misuse of its confidential information. Luo's current whereabouts are unknown.

The incident comes as Intel faces one of its most difficult financial periods in years, having reportedly cut 35,000 jobs since 2022 as part of cost-reduction efforts. Luo's dismissal is believed to have been part of this broader workforce reduction.

Intel has previously taken legal action against former employees for similar misconduct. In a recent case, another ex-Intel engineer was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $34,000 for illegally copying CPU-related information before joining Microsoft. Court documents revealed that the data was later used by Microsoft during negotiations with Intel to gain leverage.

Intel said it is cooperating with authorities and pursuing all legal channels to recover the stolen information. Luo has not yet responded publicly or through legal counsel to the allegations.