By David Kravets April 20, 2010 | 4:31 pm | Categories: Crime, Threats
It was only a matter of time before another banker, lured by the prospects of riches, would get busted on allegations of stealing source code connected to a high-frequency, stock-and-commodities trading platform.
The latest arrest concerns a former Societe Generale trader who was being detained Tuesday on New York federal court charges of stealing the computer code of the Paris-based banking concern’s high-frequency trading software.
Monday’s arrest of Samarth Agrawal, 26, came nine months after a Goldman Sachs programmer was arrested on similar charges that he, too, stole his employer’s source code for software his employer used to make sophisticated, high-speed, high-volume stock and commodities trades.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the use of these programs that many believe give their users an unfair advantage over other traders. Nevertheless, stealing the code to these suspect programs remains illegal.
When Sergey Aleynikov, the Goldman Sachs computer programmer, was arrested in July, the authorities said the software at issue could “manipulate markets in unfair ways.”
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http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/bankerarrested/