According to The Mercury News, Jinfeng Luo joined Intel in 2014 but was handed a termination notice on 7 July last year, right in the middle of Chipzilla’s latest attempt to solve its financial mess by axing staff. Luo responded by downloading roughly 18,000 files, transferring them onto a NAS, and ghosting his former employer.

Intel’s internal watchdogs first caught him trying to smuggle the data out on an external drive about a week before his exit, but could not block it. Luo tried again a few days later and this time succeeded. For the rest of his final stretch, Luo reportedly went full Mission Impossible, hoovering up as much sensitive data as he could before the badge stopped working.

After three months of emails, phone calls, and snail mail failed to draw any response, Chipzilla has now filed a lawsuit demanding $250,000 in damages and the return of the nicked data.

This isn’t the first time the company has had to chase down its own for playing fast and loose with confidential material. A previous case saw another Intel defector fined $34,000 after he pocketed proprietary info and used it to charm his way into Microsoft. That episode even revealed that Redmond gained some strategic leverage from it during talks with Chipzilla.

Luo is currently missing in action, not responding to any allegations and likely hoping the litigation somehow disappears before he does. Chipzilla, meanwhile, continues to haemorrhage staff as it tries to crawl out from under the rubble of a long-broken business model.