Silicon Valley was turning sand into gold. Criminals noticed. Richard Bernes took it upon himself to go after the thieves who began preying on the tech industry.
Rich Bernes, who oversaw the FBI’s high-tech crime squad on Wednesday, March 27, 1996. These days, thieves hit Apple stores and scamper out with every iPhone they can grab. In Silicon Valley’s early years, criminals — sometimes with guns — went after the technology industry’s building block: the small but precious computer chip.
The semiconductor — computer processors built on wafers of silicon made from sand — became the engine of an explosive transformation that gave the Valley of Heart’s Delight its new, technology-focused nickname. Silicon Valley was turning sand into gold. The rise of the computer chip birthed a feeding frenzy for criminals.
The ill-gotten fruits of Silicon Valley’s innovation were sold to companies in the United States and overseas — and also to America’s chief Cold War rival. In 1981, a federal prosecutor in a Wall Street Journal interview described “the Silicon Valley” as a hotbed for shipment of stolen computer chips and other technology to the Soviet Union.
Former FBI agent Richard Bernes and his wife, Cindy with Candi and Ernie Tibaldi , and Linda and Phil Frocht . Ernie Tibaldi and the Frochts were FBI colleagues of Bernes. “We’re realizing that we’re in the diamond business,” Fonda told the Mercury News at the time. “The stuff we deal with is that precious.”
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