A San Francisco jury found former chief security officer Joe Sullivan guilty of criminal obstruction for failing to report a 2016 cybersecurity incident to the authorities, a spokesman for the Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
Sullivan, who was fired from Uber in 2017 and found guilty of two counts, including obstruction of justice and deliberate concealment of felony.
Sullivan worked to hide the data breach from the Federal Trade Commission FTC and took measures to prevent the hackers from being caught, said Stephanie Hinds, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California.
The case involves a breach at Uber's systems that affected data of 57 million passengers and drivers. The incident was not reported by the company for a year.
In July, Uber accepted responsibility for covering up the breach, and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution of Sullivan over his alleged role in concealing the hacking, as part of a settlement with U.S. prosecutors to avoid criminal charges.
Sullivan's lawyer David Angeli and the FTC did not respond immediately to Reuters requests for comment.
Prosecutors had said at the time he paid $100,000 in bitcoins and had them sign nondisclosure agreements that falsely stated they had not stolen data.
Sullivan was also accused of withholding information from Uber officials who could have disclosed the breach to the FTC, which had been evaluating the San Francisco-based company's data security after a 2014 breach.
In September 2018, Uber paid $148 million to settle claims by all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. that it was too slow to disclose the hacking.