Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that Uber deployed an espionage team to plunder trade secrets from its rivals. That has triggered a delay in a high-profile trial over whether the beleaguered ride-hailing company stole self-driving car technology from Google spinoff Waymo. The criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. Justice Department centers on information contained in a 37-page letter that Uber's former manager of global intelligence sent in May to a company lawyer. The investigation wasn't publicly known until Tuesday, when it surfaced in a court hearing that was supposed to set the stage for a trial pitting Uber against Waymo, a self-driving car pioneer that started within Google eight years ago and is still a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. The hearing instead quickly turned into a forum raising more questions about the ethics and conduct of Uber.

The testimony in a San Francisco courtroom Tuesday comes amid revelations that federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that Uber deployed an espionage team to plunder trade secrets from its rivals. That has triggered a delay in a high-profile federal trial over whether the beleaguered ride-hailing service stole self-driving car technology from a Google spinoff.