Electro-ramblings

The incredible story of Amr Mohsen, former chief executive of EDA firm Aptix, has finally come to an ending of sorts, with a US judge sending him down for 17 years.

Electronic News has the full story here: Aptix founder sentenced to 17 years for perjury, obstruction of justice, but the beginnings go back nearly ten years.

Aptix, known for its FPGA prototyping tools, sued emulator maker Quickturn for patent infringement. However, the judge in that trial found that evidence was falsified in the patent lawsuit.

Mohsen had added pages to his engineering notebook to make it look like he invented key claims in a Quickturn patent.

With a plot that would not disgrace a Hollywood blockbuster, forensic testing determined the notebooks were written well after Mohsen claimed. The notebooks were then mysteriously stolen from Mohsen's car.

Lying in court obviously got Mohsen charged with perjury, which he compounded by attempting to flee the US, thereby getting himself incarcerated in Santa Rita jail.

While on remand waiting for the trial (by the same Judge Alsop), Mohsen got a fellow inmate to intimidate witnesses and allegedly hatch a plot to kill the good judge (Ex-CEO on murder plot charge).

Mohsen was found guilty in March last year on 17 counts, including conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, contempt, attempted intimidation of witnesses, and solicitation of the arson of a government witness's car.

Luckily for Mohsen he was acquitted of soliciting the murder of the judge, as 17 years would have seemed a brief instant in time compared to his sentence.