Igusa, who faces the longest sentence of any of the seven Avanti defendants, pled "no contest" to charges of trade-secrets theft in late May. Igusa was accused of stealing Cadence Design Systems Inc.'s placement and routing source code and handing it over to Avanti while Igusa was an independent consultant.

Igusa, in fact, was charged with six felony counts in 1995, well before the Avanti case surfaced. He was arrested after source code for Cadence's FRoute and QPlace programs was allegedly found in a 1994 police search of his home. Shortly after the December 1995 police raid on Avanti, Igusa was linked to that case as well and charged with selling Cadence source code to Avanti. Later, the original charges against Igusa were superseded by the charges against him as an Avanti co-defendant.

Well after the initial charges of felony theft, SPC hired Igusa as one of its first employees, in 1996. He has been with the company ever since and is a "valuable member" of SPC's R&D team, said Chao. But contrary to a posting in the E-Mail Synopsys User's Group (ESNUG) that characterized Igusa as SPC's "chief architect," Chao said Igusa is one of approximately 20 engineers and is not in management.

Reached at SPC, Igusa declined to speak with EE Times, aside from identifying his title as "engineer."

Chao defended his company's decision to hire Igusa. "We hired Mitch based on his technical talent and his living up to our highest standard of work ethics and honesty as long as he is employed here," Chao said. "If Mitch ever failed to live up to our standard, he would have been kicked out a long time ago."

Chao declined to say what Igusa has worked on for SPC, but presumably he was involved in the development of First Encounter, a highly successful RTL silicon virtual prototyping tool. Asked if there was ever any concern that Igusa's work for SPC was not original, Chao replied, "absolutely not." Chao also said there will be "no impact" on First Encounter if Igusa is forced to trade his cubicle at SPC for a prison cell.

"While Mitch has to come to terms with his past, his employment with us has been a totally positive experience for both him and the company," Chao said.

Now Igusa faces an uncertain future, as the June 21 sentencing hearing approaches for him and the other Avanti defendants. But it's not yet known for how long or even if Igusa will actually serve time in prison.

Julius Finkelstein, deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, said that his office is asking for "up to six years" because Igusa would not agree to a relatively fixed period of prison time. Two other co-defendants who face prison, Eric Cheng and Stephen Wuu, agreed to 364 days and 16-24 months, respectively. By not making such an agreement, Igusa is free to argue for a lower sentence, or for no sentence — but he also risks serving much more time than Cheng or Wuu.

Finkelstein said that the prison sentences could begin immediately after the June 21 hearing, but normally defendants are given a month or so to get their affairs in order.

Igusa is still at his desk today, but all bets are off for the future. "He's still waiting for his sentence," said Chao. "We'll just have to see what happens after that."