Uber Survived the Spying Scandal. Their Careers Didn’t.

A former co-worker accused the men of wiretapping their colleagues, hacking foreign governments and stealing trade secrets. It wasn’t true, but the allegations still follow them.

The men who gathered intelligence for Uber were supposed to be ghosts. For years, they were un-Googleable sentries, quietly informing executives about the actions of competitors, opponents and disgruntled employees. But the secrecy of the tightknit team ended abruptly in 2017 when one of its members turned on the others, accusing them of stealing trade secrets, wiretapping and destroying evidence.

They flouted the law while carrying out Uber’s dirtiest missions, their former co-worker, Richard Jacobs, claimed in an April 2017 email sent to top Uber executives. His lawyer followed up with a letter that said the team went so far as to hack foreign governments and wiretap Uber’s own employees.

But Mr. Jacobs’s most damning allegations of illegal activity were not true. In June, nearly four years after his claims drew wide attention, he retracted them. In a letter to his former co-workers that he wrote as part of a legal settlement, Mr. Jacobs explained that he had never intended to suggest that they broke the law.