Faraday Future files lawsuit against ex-CFO Stefan Krause
The struggling EV company alleges that its former CFO illegally recruited employees and encouraged wanton theft of company secrets.
Faraday Future is a company that often seems to be making news for the wrong reasons, and today's announcement of a lawsuit by the company against former Chief Financial Officer Stefan Krause certainly follows that trend. The suit, filed today in Central California District Court, alleges that Krause not only stole Faraday Future trade secrets, but employees as well.
The suit states that before his departure from Faraday Future in November 2017, Krause started a new electric car company that was (somewhat unfortunately) named Evelozcity and that before FF fired him, he attempted to recruit other employees to join EVelozcity, encouraging them to take company secrets with them.
"We do not have, nor do we need, any technology from Faraday Future. This complaint continues Faraday's pattern of hurling false and inflammatory accusations against us. We will respond to the many recklessly inaccurate allegations in this desperate lawsuit at the appropriate time," said a representative from EVelozcity, in a statement.
Faraday Future has named its former CFO Stefan Krause in a lawsuit alleging serious theft of intellectual property and poaching employees.
The lawsuit also mentions that former executive Bill Strickland supposedly took thousands of documents from FF servers, though curiously he isn't named alongside Krause in the lawsuit. Other former Faraday employees get the same treatment in the lawsuit documents, including Sohel Merchant and Christoph Kuttner.
Faraday Future threatened legal action against Stefan Krause at the time of his termination, stating in a press release:
"Stefan Krause's possible violation of law and lack of contribution to FF's goals over the course of his leadership since March has led to severe damages to the interests of FF and its investors. FF is currently taking legal actions as a result of Stefan Krause's malfeasance and dereliction of duty."
This isn't the first time the struggling electric vehicle startup has attempted to sue its former employees after they've gone on to other, similar companies. Two ex-employees told The Verge that the electric vehicle startup Indi EV received cease and desist letters alleging much the same as the Krause lawsuit.
It would seem that Faraday's plans to deliver its first customer cars in 2018 may be more challenging than it anticipated.
Update, Jan. 29: Added comment by EVelozcity representative.
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