Ex-Goldman Programmer Wants Theft Charges Tossed
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. former computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov said a judge should dismiss charges he stole trading software from the bank because the acts described by U.S. prosecutors don’t constitute crimes.
Aleynikov, 40, was arrested last July and indicted Feb. 11 in what a prosecutor called the “most substantial” theft New York-based Goldman could recall. The programmer stole a code for Goldman’s high-frequency trading business on his last day at the bank in June 2009, prosecutors said in the indictment.
“The acts of which Aleynikov stands accused -- copying, transporting and accessing proprietary computer source code for an investment bank’s high-frequency trading business -- do not constitute the federal crimes for which he was indicted,” Kevin Marino, Aleynikov’s lawyer, said in court papers.
He is charged with theft of trade secrets, transportation of stolen property in foreign commerce and unauthorized computer access. He faces as long as 25 years in prison if convicted. Aleynikov pleaded not guilty to the charges. U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote in New York, who is presiding over the case, set a Nov. 29 trial date.
Aleynikov, who started at Goldman in May 2007, left on June 5, 2009. That day he transferred “hundreds of thousands of lines of source code for Goldman’s high-frequency trading system from its computer network” to an outside server in Germany, according to the indictment.
Trading Platform
That trading platform isn’t “a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” as described by the statute, according to Aleynikov.
The allegedly stolen code didn’t constitute “goods, wares, merchandise, securities or money” as defined by federal law, Marino said in the filing.
“The statute is obviously designed to criminalize the act of stealing a trade secret embodied in a product that is produced for, if not actually placed in the stream of commerce,” Marino said. “Goldman’s high-frequency trading platform does not meet that description by anyone’s lights.”
Janice Oh, a spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, had no comment. She said prosecutors are expected to file a reply by July 23.
The case is U.S. v. Aleynikov, 1:10-cr-00096, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
-- With assistance from Thom Weidlich and David Glovin. Editors: Andrew Dunn, Michael Hytha
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in New York federal court at pathurtado@bloomberg.net.
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