Former Goldman Programmer Argues -- Again -- That His IP-Theft Case Should Be Tossed
September 17 2019 - 06:32PM
Dow Jones News
By Corinne Ramey
The conviction of a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. computer
programmer should be tossed because he has been prosecuted twice
for the same conduct, his lawyer told a New York state appeals
court Tuesday, marking the latest chapter in a decade-long legal
saga.
The legal chronicles of Sergey Aleynikov, who worked at Goldman
as a computer programmer from May 2007 through June 2009, have
included two trials, multiple appeals and a year in federal prison.
Tuesday's appeal, Mr. Aleynikov's lawyers wrote in court documents,
is "the final chapter in Aleynikov's decade-long odyssey through
the nation's criminal justice system."
In 2009, federal authorities arrested Mr. Aleynikov and accused
him of copying Goldman's proprietary code for its
high-frequency-trading business, which uses algorithmic trading
programs. Mr. Aleynikov then uploaded that code to a server in
Germany and brought it on a flash drive to Chicago, where he met
with a startup that had hired him to help develop its own
high-frequency software.
After a trial in federal court in Manhattan, Mr. Aleynikov was
convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. The Second U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, ruling that the
National Stolen Property Act required that the item in question be
tangible.
In 2012, the Manhattan district attorney's office charged Mr.
Aleynikov with state crimes stemming from the same conduct. In
2015, a jury convicted him of one count of unlawful use of secret
scientific material, but the judge later dismissed it, citing
insufficient evidence.
A state appeals court reinstated the conviction. Mr. Aleynikov
was sentenced to time served.
On Tuesday, a panel of judges from the state Appellate
Division's First Department, an intermediate appeals court in
Manhattan, weighed whether to overturn that conviction. At issue,
Mr. Aleynikov's lawyer said, was whether that conviction violates
double-jeopardy laws, which bar someone from being prosecuted twice
for the same crime.
"This is nothing more than a complete second bite of the apple,"
Kevin Marino, a lawyer for Mr. Aleynikov, told the judges. He said
the differences in federal and state statutes amount to
semantics.
Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Roper argued that state
and federal laws were different and dealt with different
conduct.
Several judges indicated they were sympathetic to prosecutors'
arguments. "The reason [Mr. Aleynikov was] acquitted is the federal
statute didn't address that conduct," said one judge. "The state
statute does."
A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 17, 2019 18:17 ET (22:17 GMT)
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