Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer found guilty
A computer programmer accused of stealing software from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. faces up to 15 years in prison after being convicted on two federal criminal counts.
A U.S. District Court jury in Manhattan found Sergei Aleynikov, 40, guilty Friday on one count of economic espionage and one count of transporting stolen goods across state lines. He is set to be sentenced in March.
Aleynikov, who worked on Goldman’s high-frequency-trading desk, was arrested a month after he quit the investment bank last year to work for a Chicago start-up, Teza Technologies, which was trying to build its own trading operation.
High-frequency trading has boomed in recent years to the point that it accounts for an estimated two-thirds of all stock trading. Goldman made $300 million in profit last year from high-frequency trading, prosecutors said.
This is the second conviction in the last month of someone accused of stealing trading software.
“We will use the full force of the federal law to prosecute those who steal valuable and proprietary information from their employers, whether those firms are on Wall Street or Main Street,” Manhattan U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara said after the conviction.
Aleynikov’s lawyers acknowledged that their client encrypted some of Goldman’s trading programs on his last day of work at Goldman last June, downloaded them onto his personal computer and took them on a visit to his new employer. But the defense argued that his conduct should have been the subject of a civil lawsuit, not a criminal prosecution.
During closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors called Aleynikov a “thief.”
The jury began deliberating Thursday afternoon after a two-week trial.
