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After Six Hours Of Deliberations, Sergey Aleynikov Found Guilty
Score one for the farce team. That scourge to market efficiency, fairness and integrity, Sergey Aleynikov, about whom we have written tomes, has been found guilty. The HFT code in question, that can "manipulate markets" is safe and sound, back with its true master, Goldman Sachs, which firm promises its malicious attempt to squeeze CDS traders in 2007 is completely irrelevant, and the sheeple once again don't understand that the firm's intentions were nothing but pristine.
From Reuters:
A jury convicted a former
Goldman Sachs computer programmer on criminal charges of
stealing secret high-frequency trading code from Wall Street's
most influential bank.
Sergey Aleynikov, 40, was indicted in February under the
Economic Espionage Act on accusations he copied and removed
computer code from Goldman in June 2009 before taking a new job
with Teza Technologies LLC, a high-frequency trading start-up
firm.
Jurors reached their verdict after a two week-long trial in
U.S. District Court in New York. They deliberated for about six
hours.
Aleynikov's lawyer contended that his client may have
breached Goldman's confidentiality policy but he did not harm
and could not harm the firm.
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Apparently not a jury of his peers.
GS purloined Martin Armstrong Princeton Economics code
http://princetoneconomics.blogspot.com/
Yes - and look what happened to poor Martin.
Everytime I read about Martin Armstrong it disgusts me the way he was treated. Guilty or not 7 yrs. for contempt is fucking crazy.
all of this presumes a non corrupt third branch
There was a psychological experiment done in the 1950's. Random, assumably good-hearted people were asked to ask a hidden individual questions. When the invisible person got the question wrong, the good people were told to press a button to deliver a mild electical shock to the hidden person. The participant could hear the screams of the hidden person grow as the voltage increased. The moderator kept prodding the participant to deliver the shock despite any protest. Those good people always continued to deliver the shocks.
I imagine that those jurors were told stick to the question. Did this person steal corporate secrets?
The big picture does not matter.
It's not supposed to matter in court, but my sentiments are with you. This ruling is equally an indictment of Goldman Sachs' "proprietary" trading platform, but no problem for GS since they are the rulers of this country.
For those who don't know, Ignatius is referring to the Milgram experiment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Thank you.
My brain working not good. Might be from too much alcohol or not enough.
Shades of the old USSR show trials conducted with a flourish to show the world how fair and open the USSR was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_trial
"Shades of the old USSR"...
Nailed that one.
kinda the inverse of the Johnny Cash wardrobe, progressively darker
If you listen to AG Eric Holder and cronies re Gitmo show trails with guaranteed outcomes, we are already there
Pogo folks, we have met the enemy
Yeah, the proofs are continuing to cascade into increasingly public awareness.
It appears to me that wikileaks may have established an effective Maginot Line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line
It remains to be seen how this shit ends.
Thanks to zero hedge we already know how these programs work. Anybody can now hire a coder and build their own now. Goldman doesn't have an advantage anymore.
Unless you are 2 young guys Sweeden(I think). These 2 guys programed a computer to beat the HFT programs. They were arrested and forced to give up all the money they made.
Link?
I don't know how to link, but you can find it here.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/two-norwegians-face-6-years-prison-time-doing-what-hft-algos-do-us-every-single-day
Thanks, I remember this now.
Yeah, but they squeezed only their local, 1910-era exchange.
Norway and Sweden have been seperate countries since 1905 - I think :=)
Building a good one would take a lot of skill and time. Also need to get co-located so no, not everyone can do this and the big boys still have an advantage.
They were quick enough to convict someone like him but the true criminals haven't even been arrested for holding the world to ransom!
Criminal charges? Unfucking believable! Bet the jury was a bunch of idiots that don't know shit about programming or trading. Sergey rots and GS walks free. What a miscarriage of justice.
jury was dumb. as. a. bag. of. rocks.
Wasn't it pretty well established that this code was pretty rudimentary and awkward, also?
Hey, when are Lloyd BlankFiend and Jamie Diamond being tried?
In other news, half the jurors are losing their homes to foreclosure.
God's justice is on "risk on". Bread loaf rationing is next for that bunch of goldless SOB.
At last this nefarious code will be destroyed and no longer used in our free capital markets.
LOL
Don't step. Word to the wise Julian.
Let's see, we know from previous stories that GS:
(1) Sold securities that it knew would go kaboom;
(2) Lied to its clients about the safety and solidity of those securities;
(3) Took out insurance (AIG) against the failure of those securities.
(4) Gave extremely poor (self-serving) advice to Greece, which promptly cratered.
(5) Front-runs the entire market through HFT, and now:
(6) Will legally screw their own (former) employees if their interests are threatened.
Why does anyone in the whole world still do any kind of business whatever with these criminal charlatans?
"well that's nitpicking isn't it?" - Nigel Tuffnel
LOL.
...i'll have an absolut binary kabuki on the rocks with a splash "smear"nof...what's that bartender?...complementary fried squid with hush puppies?
Last posting of the playlist today: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F79EBE9FB77C107C
the next and final one will be a playlist featuring a producer I have deemed the Artist of 2010
till next week :D
Sergey Aleynikov made 3 mistakes.
1) He got greedy.
2) He stole from Goldman Sachs.
3) He didn't cover his tracks.
4) He didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
No wait, he made four mistakes.
#2 on your list is for all it would have taken. It wouldn't be surprising to me if Goldman has enough in their employee files to blackmail anyone who works or has worked for them to do their bidding at any time and place.
Rather it was simply doing anything GS don't like gets you hung drawn and quartered
Then either sell your soul in advance and take the loot or else do not work for them.
We're all adults here and can make adult decisions.
but the return on your soul beats just about every commodity...until you factor in eternity
He made a fifth mistake, at least. He failed to have enough of a sympathetic position to ensure jury nullification of draconian laws.
In the end, he will be associated with goldman by juries... as far as juries are concerned, they're all crooks, so who cares if this one goes to jail. You're also dealing with a defendant making money the jury is never likely to see... another strike against him.
Are you familiar with the case of Martin Armstrong? Have you ever heard of 7 yrs. for contempt? I ask you because you are a lawyer and wondered what your opinion is concerning this.
You can tell police to fuck off, you cannot tell a judge to fuck off. If you are ordered to give back items and you no longer have those items in your possession, you need to have a chain of custody and/or sale. If you cannot prove you sold or otherwise disposed of the items, then you're going to have to come up with a pretty compelling story.
This stuff happens all the time with the ATF... basically, the last guy in the chain of ownership of a firearm gets blamed for a crime until proven otherwise... this is why documenting transfer is so important.
Needless to say, the reasonable presumption is that if you're on the up and up, then you ought to have documentation of transfer...
My take is that it was enough money for him to trade for some jail time. Ask Lee Murray about it (couple years in a moroccan prison to take away the biggest bank heist haul in england's history). Remember, we're dealing with rational actors here.
Thanks for your evaluation. Good points.
as others have wondered, nullification only works if they understand the big picture. That takes a little while to figure that out. ANd then there's those pretty interesting motions in limine
Yeah, Blind Justice rules:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
This is the job of his attorneys... some laws are so harsh that it is virtually impossible to overcome them. In such an event, it's time to play into sympathies... in the event the trial court is biased and does not let you present arguments or make statements to the jury in which you are legally entitled, then you appeal... and make sure you preserve your arguments for appeal and timely file an appeal.
In the end, he had too much shit stink on him to come out smelling like a rose. The jury doesn't need to know anything other than he is a thief... and although he stole from a piece of shit asshole that many would love to remove all of its abilities to function, the jury remained unsympathetic.
I would be very curious as to the jury instructions and closing arguments... you have to beat it over their fucking heads...
Note to self: Cultivate humility. And maybe resume that annual blood drive thing we had going. You can't be too careful these days.
You might also want to replicate and indeed even extend your work on your own time. A coder might look at it as his/her Daily Journal/Code Diary. And of course you don't take it to work with you.
Then you wouldn't get so completely screwed. Or at least not so easily and predictably.
work for hire baby.
Somehow I'm reminded of the attorney general guy who lost his senate race to the late mel cranahan, who could not care a figlet about the fact that justice was blind in the US, but had to cover her statues breasts because it might upset some whacko sensibilities.
That was telling.
This is a farce.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
John Ashcroft was quite a character.
Thanks Third. Yes, J AssCroft. Bush Junior's hatchet man.
ORI
If anyone actually thought a "not guilty" verdict was a possibility are a bit disillusioned by the MSM. Justice is free to the highest bidder.
Instead of trying to hog the code for himself he should have put it on ebay for 100 bucks a shot and sold a million copies. Or just wikileaked the code.
I don't have a lot of sympathy for Sergey.
He worked for GS. He wrote code to rip people off. He got greedy.
Meh. I'm a coder too and I don't think I would invite him to my next cube party.
Yeah, but Sergey wrote code that worked.
You saying my code is teh suxness? You don't even know me man.
No, I can however bear witness to defective reasoning.
Ha ha! Then you mistook feelings for reasons.
Instincts rule. A cat never yields to reasons.
Agree but it has Libby trial flavors
Agreed. I hate that part. Assange will be next and after that anyone else that pitches a fit. The noose will get really tight really fast.
I'm just say'n 'bout Sergey as a man. Sellout man is sellout. Then he got caught at it. But he was a sellout the whole time.
maybe it's the criminal trial lawyer in me but I am fed up watching little guys go down hard while I witness the biggest criminals in human history walk free and worse, run the show while my children prepare to be punished.
I will hazard a guess and suggest it is NOT the criminal trial lawyer inside you feeling that way. It is the regular human being inside you feeling that way.
That's right. The tentacles didn't fool anyone.
weird that a lawyer could be a human, at least I didn't go into politics
The law itself need not be dehumanizing. The money in the law might be. Politics however by it's very nature dehumanizing. I've rubbed shoulders with some political animals and without exception the longer they stay in the dirtier they become. We lose more good people that way.
Fair enough, Cat. Yet he did end up being a useful asshole. Sometimes fate is somewhat kind--he really didn't earn it, but he deserves something for contributing to his times in a larger sense, whether intentionally or not.
That's why we have book deals.
Couple years in the cooler and he's a made man.
Notice, no sarc flag here.
You're right. But we've gotten alot out of him already.
"Aleynikov's lawyer contended that his client may have breached Goldman's confidentiality policy but he did not harm and could not harm the firm.
so true. fuck goldman sachs, soros, rockefeller, gatesl, and the berkshire hathaway asshole
I have to agree with every name on your list but Soros. Not because of who he might be, but because of the incredibly corosive power I see that reference wrecking upon otherwise organic attractions of like-minded people on the fundamental issues in play today.
Follow it in the forums here. Soros references are instantly and poisonously divisive to people who otherwise, one to one, are in near complete agreement about what matters.
In the Rust Belt, justice is a bargain. The Banana Republic package is truly complete: no jury hassles, no paperwork, and a press-free results, in about an hour.
Imagine what a Banana Republic with side serving of Blackmail costs in New York !
royals ----> "Pardon me, do you have any Grey"
[Brick]<---- youth
Ah, the Gollum Sachs has it's Precious back.
All's well in Middle Earth again.
This guy was dumb. He can share a jail cell with @$$hkari
There are generally two kinds of Russians: 1) supergenius masterminds and 2) dumb lazy criminals. (ok 3) gold digging whores )
Sounds like we have a #2 here
ROFL +1
Didn't Sarah Palin once say, "Off with his head!"
Or, was that the Queen of Hearts?
Was she talking about Assange, or Aleynikov? Easy to get those A's mixed up.
Of course all of this would have made Stalin proud, show trials and all.
And now, commence with the sheep shearing and buy the dip! Sheep dip that is.
There are generally two kinds of Russians: 1) supergenius masterminds and 2) dumb lazy criminals. (ok 3) gold digging whores )
Sounds like we have a #2 here
ROFL +1
What the fuck is wrong with juries these days? Where is the subversion? Presumably they're made up of "common people", on average, yet they're always siding with big business. I would love to get on a jury in a case like this or the P2P one by bullshitting during jury selection, and then subvertng the proceedings in favor of the non-corporate entity.
Law? Who cares about law? It's never about the facts of the case for the big boys, whose crimes are so large that they get away with them.
Just more proof that Americans are completely entranced (in a trance state) by their corporate 0wners.
Presumably they're made up of "common people", on average, yet they're always siding with big business.
Aside from being patently wrong, this was a criminal trial...