Legal News

Ex-Goldman Programmer Aleynikov, Prosecutors Divided On Potential Sentence

By Chad Bray

Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov’s lawyer and federal prosecutors in Manhattan have very different views of how long and whether he should spend time in jail.

As a reminder, Aleynikov was convicted in December of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property. Prosecutors alleged that Aleynikov (pictured) copied the confidential source code for the investment bank’s high-speed trading system and intended to use it to build a similar trading platform at his new employer. You can read prior LB posts here, here and here.

In court papers late last week, prosecutors said Aleynikov should be sentenced to up to 10 years and one month in prison. In a separate filing, Kevin Marino, Aleynikov’s lawyer, said his client should receive probation.

“Aleynikov was simply a theif motivated by greed, someone who sought to benefit from the valuable intellectual property of his employer to make meony for himself and his new company,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca A. Roher said in court papers.

Marino said there was no evidence that Goldman suffered a loss and prosecutors are misreading the juror’s verdict. Aleynikov only intended to use portions of the downloaded code that were “open source,” or freely available, Marino said.

“The government now seeks to have Aleynikov punished as though he had not only stolen Goldman’s entire platform, as it originally claimed, but also had sold that platform to a Goldman competitor who used it to cause Goldman monetary damages of twenty million dollars,” Marino said.

Aleynikov himself was jailed last month pending sentencing. Prosecutors argued he was an increased risk of flight in part because of the lengthy sentence he is facing and his strained relationship with his family in the U.S.

He has dual Russian and U.S. citizenship and is separated from his wife. Sentencing is set for Friday.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 14, 2011 (boomark / email).