After a four-week trial, the jury found that Krami Arabi, former vice president of research and development at the telecom giant, committed fraud by carefully hiding his role in developing and marketing a valuable microchip technology, then creating a start-up company and reaching a deal to sell it and the technology to Qualcomm for $180 million.
Prosecutors said that as part of his employment with Qualcomm, Arabi had agreed that virtually all technology he invented while working there belonged to the company.
To perpetrate the fraud, Arabi set up a start-up called Abreezio, prosecutors said. He hid his role as the new company’s shadow CEO and made his younger sister, Sheida Alan, then a graduate student, the purported inventor of the technology.
Alan was a nonentity throughout the technology’s formation, development, marketing, and sale, prosecutors said.
In the summer of 2015, when Abreezio was filing a new round of patent applications, she legally changed her last name from “Arabi” to “Alan” to further conceal her relationship with her brother, prosecutors said.
According to the indictment filed on May 24, 2022, on or about Oct. 30, 2015, Qualcomm paid $150 million to the conspirators before discovering the fraud. Sheida Alan received about $920,000.
Arabi was also charged with money laundering. Arabi invested the money gained from the Qualcomm deal in Canadian and Norwegian real estate while concealing his involvement, and funneled funds back to his U.S. companies via intermediary shells, prosecutors said.
“The defendant took advantage of the trust placed in him, lining his pockets with millions by orchestrating a scheme to deceive and then bleed his own employer,” said acting U.S. Attorney Andrew Haden. “His actions weren’t just a betrayal of the company—they were a direct attack on the very principles of fairness and integrity that keep business honest.”
Arabi was convicted of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and conspiracy to launder money. Each count has maximum penalties of 20 years in prison and a $500,000 to $1 million fine, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
His sentencing is set for June 27, the U.S. Attorney’s office told The Epoch Times.
The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Southern District of California office. Three other defendants, Sheida Alan, Sanjiv Taneja, and Ali Akbar Shokouhi, were also charged in the indictment.
Shokouhi, also a former Qualcomm employee and the primary investor in Abreezio, has pleaded guilty to money laundering in previous trials and is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 1.
Taneja, Abreezio’s nominal CEO, has pleaded guilty to money laundering and is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11.
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 $45 million to the company, according to a prosecution trial brief, though the settlement did not contain any admission of wrongdoing.
Arabi was vice president of engineering from 2007 to 2012, and VP of research and development from 2013 to 2016 at Qualcomm, according to the indictment and his LinkedIn profile.
