Legal News

Ex-SocGen Trader Gets 3 Years, States: ?The Character of a Man is in the Dark?

By Chad Bray

A former Societe Generale SA trader has been sentenced to three years in prison in the theft of the investment bank’s proprietary computer code for its high-frequency trading business. Click here for the WSJ story; here and here for earlier LB posts on the case.

By way of background, federal prosecutors in Manhattan had alleged that Samarth Agrawal secretely printed out copies of the bank’s computer code in 2009 and planned to use it to build a copy of SocGen’s trading program at a competitor. A jury convicted him last year of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property.

On Monday, Agrawal, who has been in custody since his arrest in April 2010, admitted to stealing SocGen’s “trade secret.” “I stole it and I should not have.”

In a rambling statement that lasted about 15 minutes, he also expressed remorse for his actions and said the greatest punishment is the shame he’s brought his family.

Agrawal, 27,  said the measure of a man is how he acts when he is alone. “The character of a man is in the dark,” Agrawal said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 01, 2011 (boomark / email).