Former Goldman Programmer Found Guilty

By Richard Gibson
Dec 10 2010

A former Goldman Sachs programmer was found guilty today in US District court of stealing high frequency trading source code from his former employer.

Sergey Aleynikov, a 40-year-old Russian immigrant, worked for Goldman Sachs as a computer programmer. It was his job to make sure that the high frequency trading program that the company used to exploit tiny price changes in stocks and make quick trades was working properly.

At one point Aleynikov decided to leave Goldman for a small startup company that would specialize in high frequency trading. Before he left for the final day he decided to upload the source code from the Goldman computers to a server in Germany. He boarded a flight and was arrested in New Jersey when he disembarked.

The entire trial of Aleynikov did not surround innocence or guilt but simply whether he had stolen the code to benefit his new employer for financial gain. Aleynikov contended that he was taking only some open source code with him that anyone could get from the internet.

The jury deliberated just three hours before reaching a verdict of guilty. Aleynikov now faces up to ten years in prison when he is sentenced sometime next year.

However, his attorney has said that he plans to appeal the conviction on several grounds and is certain that the appeals court will grant a new trial based on the information in the motion. Aleynikov could also face deportation based on the conviction.