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Former Goldman Sachs Programmer Arrested and Charged Again For Code Theft
hypnosec writes with news that Sergey Aleynikov, once a programmer for Goldman Sachs, has been arrested and charged again for stealing code from his employer in 2009. Aleynikov was originally charged for the crime in 2009. He was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 97 months in prison, but an appeals court overturned the verdict, saying the corporate espionage laws were misapplied. Manhattan District Attorney Cryus Vance said, "This code is so highly confidential that it is known in the industry as the firm's 'secret sauce.' Employees who exploit their access to sensitive information should expect to face criminal prosecution in New York State in appropriate cases." The Fifth Amendment's "double jeopardy" clause is unlikely to stop this case because it's within a different jurisdiction — the earlier trial was in federal court, and this one is in New York State court.
If you play with fire, you are gonna get burned - Vincent Vega
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
We can't have people robbing and stealing with impunity. It's time someone from the finance industry is punished with extreme prejudice. /troll
So even if he is the original author of the software, (he carries the details and inspiration in his head), and the software came out of his mind, he is still a criminal for telling/selling his idea to someone else.
"I'll take Undermining the Bill of Rights for $500 Alex"
Can't they apply theft of trade secret laws? or does that fall under the corporate espionage umbrella?
Feds walk away from prosecuting Goldman, SEC misses Madoff, but this guy needs to be prosecuted - twice!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Is anyone else sick of the Tyrant Lords subverting the legal system to violate the clear intentions in the Constitution? I highly doubt the intentions of the 5th Amendment's Double Jeopardy were to become Null & Void from a simple jurisdictional venue swap.
Oblig: IANAL
Oblig: I am a Federalist Republican Proletariat.
Oblig: They can pry my shotgun from my cold dead fingers.
Being arrested and tried twice for the same crime sounds like the definition of double jeopardy to me, but I'd probably be excluded from most juries for knowing more than two amendments.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While the government protects the preferred banks, gives them infinite credit, while destroying the currency, the person who is punished is a guy that 'stole' some source code.
While the banks are using the infinite credit and fake insurance by the government to pump one credit bubble after another, from stocks, to house prices, to bonds and dollars themselves, the person who gets busted is somebody who doesn't have anything to do with any financial transactions.
The lesson is - if you steal, steal huge and make sure that you have strong government protection and cover. Actually be the government, that's the best way to steal. Have ties to all the governments in the world, finance wars and government debt by using central credit from the central banks. In fact just steal individual customer funds, if you are somebody like Corzine.
But if you are a schmuck who decides to steal pencils from the bank, you are going to be made example of.
You can't handle the truth.
Can it get much more bogus than that?
Oh, well, thank god they got this guy. I feel so much safer now, especially now that Goldman was just let off the hook once again. The SEC was obviously on a witch hunt designed to tear down one of our great pillars of society.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And so what? Doesn't the fifth apply both in federal and state court? I shudder at the precedent it will set if indeed he can be prosecuted twice, NEVER MIND that it is under different jurisdictions. He's already been tried. Give it up. This would open the doors to prosecuting ANYONE multiple times. That, in my opinion, is FAR worse than some petty software thief getting away with some stolen code.
Well, guess we know who pays Cryus Vance's bills.
Once we get that evil bastard Bush out, things are going to be a lot better.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
So... who exactly would want Goldman Sachs software, which directed them to engage in illegal practices? I mean, other than federal prosecutors, who have decided not to prosecute anyway?
Just lobotomize anyone when they leave your company, then its not an issue of them stealing your secrets
If they're gonna be frying him like this, why don't he let everyone get a peek at what's so important? They're gonna keep hammering him til something sticks, why not spill the beans?
Sig not found.
Probably the reason they are coming down on him so hard is that the code has something embarressing, incriminating, illegal, unethical or all of the above and more for Goldman Sacks. They are just trying to suppress more evidence against them, and since they seem to own the governmnet and courts, that seems the best way to do it.
Probably using the procedure names "Money Laundering", "investment fraud", etc... wasn't a wise idea.
That's Double Jeopardy. Entries start at $200, and are for even-numbered amounts.
or is it copyright infringement?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Wow, I think I have finally witnessed the last straw.
Interestingly, I attended last night, a debate at a group known as "Drinking Liberally" where the president of the local group stated that he could not vote for Obama, because the administration has a kill-list, has not been transparent, has not closed Guantanamo, and has continued many of the Bush Policies that we had hoped to change. The Woman debating him stated that NOT voting for Obama was voting for Romney who will be worse. That didn't change the mind of the group leader who said he would be voting Green Party.
Now, I am wondering myself about this in the context of this blatant attempt to subvert the law so that the 1% can get what they want, and the lawyers and politicians are clearly on the side of the 1% and not looking out for the rights of the people.
We are truly borked as nation. There's no going back from this kind of corruption. If this even goes to COURT, it's a complete breakdown of our "justice" system (and I use that term loosely.
Tell me Mr. Prosecutor; how many arrests have you made from the financial boondoggle of 2008? How many arrests have you made from the Robo-Foreclosure scandal? But you're supporting the whims of the very crooks who have robbed our nation? Why not just start working for the Mafia? I hear they pay good as well.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I don't care about the technical excuse, it is being put into court more than 1 time for the same crime and possibly being punished more than once. The state exists within the federal - like a hierarchy and should not be the same as two different states. I have no problem if the crime differs but for the SAME crime the federal case should prevent the state case. Given how many laws there are I'm sure they can find other charges and string them out to keep him on trial for decades... at least that is not as cheap.
OJ: If you are NOT convicted on a criminal case you should not be open to civil cases on the SAME crime even if they rename "murder' to "wrongful death." If he was convicted then maybe he could be sued in civil court for damages such as lost income etc. although I think the criminal case should handle such issues as well. Simply for the family to sue for blood money (makes me think of Sharia law) is not reasonable. Revenge is not justice.
The real story is how Goldman is untouchable.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"After a yearlong investigation, the Justice Department said Thursday that it won't bring charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or any of its employees for financial fraud related to the mortgage crisis."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577579840698144490.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
"But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. The bank seemed to count on the unwillingness or inability of federal regulators to stop them - and when called to Washington last year to explain their behavior, Goldman executives brazenly misled Congress, apparently confident that their perjury would carry no serious consequences. Thus, while much of the Levin report describes past history, the Goldman section describes an ongoing? crime - a powerful, well-connected firm, with the ear of the president and the Treasury, that appears to have conquered the entire regulatory structure and stands now on the precipice of officially getting away with one of the biggest financial crimes in history."
"To recap: Goldman, to get $1.2 billion in crap off its books, dumps a huge lot of deadly mortgages on its clients, lies about where that crap came from and claims it believes in the product even as it's betting $2 billion against it. When its victims try to run out of the burning house, Goldman stands in the doorway, blasts them all with gasoline before they can escape, and then has the balls to send a bill overcharging its victims for the pleasure of getting fried."
"So let's move on to something much simpler. In the spring of 2010, about a year into his investigation, Sen. Levin hauled all of the principals from these rotten Goldman deals to Washington, made them put their hands on the Bible and take oaths just like normal people, and demanded that they explain themselves. The legal definition of financial fraud may be murky and complex, but everybody knows you can't lie to Congress.
""Article 18 of the United States Code, Section 1001," says Loyola University law professor Michael Kaufman. "There are statutes that prohibit perjury and obstruction of justice, but this is the federal statute that explicitly prohibits lying to Congress."
The law is simple: You're guilty if you "knowingly and willfully" make a "materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation." The punishment is up to five years in federal prison."
"Lloyd Blankfein went to Washington and testified under oath that Goldman Sachs didn't make a massive short bet and didn't bet against its clients. The Levin report proves that Goldman spent the whole summer of 2007 riding a "big short" and took a multibillion-dollar bet against its clients, a bet that incidentally made them enormous profits. Are we all missing something? Is there some different and higher standard of triple- and quadruple-lying that applies to bank CEOs but not to baseball players?"
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511?print=true
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This IS double jeopardy because it is the same "crime" and same set of facts. If for any reason this case is refiled, or tried, or convicted, all the freedom advocates should taker all the way to whatever court is needed to set a precedent that state and federal "jurisdiction shopping" cannot be used to bypass a lower court ruling, particularly one that exonerates the perp. Also it should be made clear double jeopardy is a federal standard that applies to all subdivisions of the government. Also since our government now jurisdiction shops other countries (New Zealand) and legal systems (UN), this is an important standard that needs to be protected not neutered.
Remember, justice is blind. Not retributional or fixated. It is the police, prosecutors and politicians that are retributional and fixated. That's why we need a constitution to begin with!
JJ
Since when are Black-Scholes and insider trading a secret sauce?
See link
I for one really wish I understood what this high frequency trading was actually doing. The algorithms cannot be working on a concept of "true value" because the "true value" of an asset does not change every millisecond. The algorithms could be working on predicting price momentum. That is the current price direction is likely to continue for some period of time. This type of algorithm only bothers me a little bit, since I think almost all people putting money in the market are playing a momentum game over some period of time. I have a feeling that it may be impossible to predict price momentum. I mean if you have enough high frequency trading computers trying to predict how long a price trend will last and making bets on this, I think you will end up with random price changes, and this is not predictable. Thus there is no money to be made with this scheme. This leaves the third category of exploiting inefficiency between multiple exchanges or exploiting some other feature of the trading system. I believe this to be an illegal activity, resulting in money being stolen. I once wrote a program to analyze buying/selling based upon moving averages. Buying at the moving average minima, and selling at its maxima. This was a losing strategy for all relatively short moving averages. I forget where positive territory was, somewhere around 360 day moving averages, but these did not beat buy and hold. I could pick a different algorithm and try again. There is a method for using candlesticks or fibonnaci sequences. I suspect these won't work either, but I haven't tried yet.
overturned != acquitted
Double Jeopardy does not apply to overturned convictions.
don't forget that in Double Jeopardy the amounts are Doubled so you can't take anything for an odd amount in DJ.
nice twist on the normal "its not DJ because this is a Civil Suit" thing
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Let's see, we've got Federal civil rights violations (not murder, so it's a separate charge). We've got civil cases (lower standard of proof, no jail but stripping of assets). Now we've got jurisdiction shopping.
How many licks does it take to get to the chewy center of oppression in the Constitutional Tootsie-Pop? A one... A two... CRUNCH! Three?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Rights" only exist to protect the people who matter (and many such rights are unwritten and generally unspoken, but actively protected by our government nonetheless). The people who do not matter seem to think they are entitled to these rights as well, which they are not. The justice system sometimes plays along with this outrageous sense of entitlement, but only when the people who do not matter are being threatened by other people who do not matter.
When people who do not matter irritate people who matter, expect retribution (possibly, but not always, with a token gesture of justice in the form of a temporary posturing towards due process).
"Don't fight it son. Confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardize your credit rating."
So a Federal judge is below a state judge?
How can the state prosecute if a federal court has thrown it out?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Funny how a global bank can ask for state and federal settlements that are "unified" but a person isn't allowed to make that same argument and would likely look guilty for even suggesting such a thing in the first place. What's more dangerous from a public good standpoint? The guy that allegedly pissed on Goldman Sachs which is obligated to protect it's own damn secrets be they "sauce" or otherwise or the bank that allegedly pissed on a good portion of the world in the name of profits? A global financial system with sentiment driven currencies (Like the USD) isn't likely to work if there is no trust or worse no assurances that banks aren't simply above the laws of any country or a superior class of "people".
For example, most folks in the US (should) know not to bank anywhere that doesn't offer FDIC or reputable equivalent (SPIC, NCUA etc) insurer and not to let depository accounts exceed the insured limit. We don't trust banks and haven't really in quite some time (if ever) and as such the government had to start insuring deposits to get people to put their money into the banks again. (Mind you we'll be ignoring the hook that banks had to join the federal reserve system to participate in the mandated insurance program which was funded by loans in part by the federal reserve itself along with the US Treasury.) What doesn't seem common knowledge is that large depository banks have trillions in derivatives (financial products based on top of other assets, sometimes other derivatives.) on their books along with the folks deposits. Should those underlying assets or derivatives (we must assume there is a real asset in there somewhere along the chain...right?) fail they, in some circumstances, could make the bank insolvent. It is unclear if the FDIC could cover such a scenario with even one of the nations largest banks let alone a more systemic failure of multiple banks. In the worst case scenario the choices would be bail the bank out or potentially let it bankrupt the FDIC system and cause an unprecedented bank run.
Am I the only one who's annoyed by software being referred to as "secret sauce"? As a software developer is sounds like either they're trivializing the work that goes into writing complicated software, or they're trying to dumb down their statements unnecessary.
Sorry...the Fourteenth Amendment EXPLICITLY applies the Bill of Rights to the States. Trying him again WOULD violate the Fifth Double-Jeapordy clause.
they'd call it the "illegal market rigging secret sauce."
Aleynikov should have folk songs written about him.
Then they'll have to arrest everyone who looks or downloads it.
I am pretty sure there's nothing special about - unlike insider trading that's happening at GS and all other firms (who all claim they are playing by the rules)
This russian antisemite will be executed by an UZI-wielding Mossad agent, because it is simple not allowed and not tolerable to steal from jewish people! (Goldman Sachs is proudly jewish run, just like all banks of the world, because only the genes of Isaac, not those of the goyim, enable economic wisdom.) They want to give this thief a chance to sit in the cooler for a few years and atone for the sin of stealing from the chosen tribe, so he becomes a better person. Yet the russian antisemite is stubborn in his vileness and makes a mockery of laws, both divinely granted and man-made. There is nothing left but the bullet. Jewish people will not be stripped of wealth and life this time, Masada must not fall again!
He used Open Source to write the original app and on leaving the company took his own code with him.
"The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sergey Aleynikov, a naturalized US citizen from Russia, was not guilty of stealing computer code under the Economic Espionage Act (EEA)". link Feb 2012
"A defense lawyer, Kevin Marino, argued in his opening statement that Aleynikov intended to strip out pieces of open- source software" link
"During a two-week trial, Marino told jurors that his client was merely trying to copy parts of the companyâ(TM)s software that were taken from public software codes". link
AccountKiller
If he wrote it then he owns it. Even if he wrote it for the company he works at he still owns it. You can only steal code that you don't type.
If you actually think your code is a type of secret sauce it should tell you it is worthless.
1. Secret sauce is usually ketchup and mayo and in code it is about as inventive
2.Anyone with a little programming sense can use a program and figure out how it works,