Katherine L. Wawrzyniak

Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine L. Wawrzyniak was clear as she told the judge why former Waymo self-driving car pioneer Anthony S. Levandowski deserved a tough sentence as a trade secret bandit. "This was a brazen theft, and it still shocks the conscience today," she said, describing the defendant as a star engineer "in the unique position of basically playing two tech titans off one another: Google on the one hand, Uber on the other."

At the sentencing hearing in early August, Wawrzyniak was allowed to deliver her sentencing remarks without a coronavirus mask. She'd worn one during earlier proceedings. "I was used to talking through a mask, though it does act as a deterrent to being long-winded," she said in a later interview.

Wawrzyniak is a rising star at the Northern District shop, where she has served as outreach coordinator for trade secrets cases. In mid-September she was slated to become the deputy chief of the general crimes unit, supervising the newest AUSAs. In March 2019, she was one of seven line prosecutors named to the new corporate fraud strike force, where she directed and managed complex Northern District investigations and represented the federal government in court. She has obtained guilty verdicts in four jury trials since 2015, following work as an O'Melveny & Myers LLP counsel and a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.

In the high-profile Levandowski case, in which the former Google engineer defected to Uber and took proprietary autonomous vehicle technology with him, she obtained a guilty plea within 12 months of indictment. U.S. v. Levandowski, 19-cr-00377 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 15, 2019).

"U.S. Attorney [David L.] Anderson's vision for my unit was to operate with speed and maximum deterrent effect," Wawrzyniak said. "We tried to honor those principles." Of Levandowski's theft, she added, "This was a crime that is not as uncommon as people would like to believe in Silicon Valley. There is an idea that stealing is part of the culture of innovation. From my perspective as a prosecutor, we look for the cases with a clear federal interest where the conduct goes farther than just the victim."

U.S. District Judge William H. Alsup agreed with Wawrzyniak that Levandowski must go to prison. Any other sentence risks "giving a green light to every future, brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets with billions on the line," the judge said. At one point Alsup remarked, "This was the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen."

The case isn't finished, Wawrzyniak said, because Levandowski isn't yet behind bars. He has a self-surrender date to be selected when the Bureau of Prisons has COVID-19 under control, even if it takes a year, the judge said, adding release conditions including that Levandowski give speeches with the title "Why I Went to Federal Prison" and that he make restitution to Google of $756,499.22 and pay a $95,000 fine.

"I don't consider a case over and done with until the defendant surrenders," Wawrzyniak said.

-- John Roemer