(Bloomberg) -- Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov was indicted on federal charges that he stole sophisticated trading software from the bank.
The indictment, unsealed today in Manhattan federal court, is a setback for Aleynikov, whose court-appointed lawyer had been urging prosecutors to dismiss the charges. Aleynikov must now enter a plea as the case moves closer to a trial.
Aleynikov was arrested July 3 and charged with theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property in foreign commerce. At his July 4 court appearance, a prosecutor said the alleged theft is the “most substantial” that New York-based Goldman Sachs can recall.
The proprietary code, worth millions of dollars, lets the company do “sophisticated, high-speed and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets,” prosecutors have said in court documents. Aleynikov planned to earn three times his salary by joining a new company and engaging in high-volume automated trading, prosecutors said.
Teza Technologies LLC, a Chicago-based firm co-founded by former Citadel Investment Group LLC trader Misha Malyshev, suspended Aleynikov after his arrest.
‘False Impression’
Aleynikov, who is free on $750,000 bond, lives in New Jersey and holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship. He and his lawyer have said the files that prosecutors said he stole weren’t shared with anyone and he took them so he could work from home.
Defense attorney Sabrina Shroff said at an Aug. 10 court hearing that prosecutors “may be under a false impression” about the case. Only 32 of 1,024 megabits of the software code was transferred, Shroff has said.
Aleynikov worked at Goldman from 2007 until June, the government said in a July criminal complaint. He was part of a team of workers responsible for improving the computer platform. His alleged transfer of computer codes ran from June 1 to June 5, according to prosecutors.
Before joining Goldman, Aleynikov worked for about eight years at IDT Corp., the U.S. vendor of prepaid calling cards, where he led the team responsible for developing routing systems, according to the profile on the social-networking site LinkedIn.
The case is U.S. v. Aleynikov, U.S. District Court, 09-mag- 1553, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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