For the past year, Sergey Aleynikov has been in prison at the Ft. Dix federal prison in New Jersey as prisoner number 90453-054. Yesterday, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed his conviction and entered a judgment of“Acquittal”, meaning that Alyenikov will be heading home as soon as some paperwork is completed. His lawyer, Kevin Marinohopes that will be as soon as today.
You may recall this case from 2009 through Aleynikov’s sentencing to prison last March when he was sentenced over 8 years in prison. Aleynikov left Goldman as a computer programmer in June 2009 for a new opportunity with Teza Technologies. As he left, he was accused of taking computer source code from Goldman’s controversial high frequency trading program. So dangerous was this code that U.S. prosecutors had been told by Goldman that in the wrong hands the computer program could harm financial markets….so dangerous that U.S. prosecutor Joseph Facciponte said of Aleynikov, “…the defendant poses both a substantial risk of flight and danger to the community,” during an initial bond hearing. Aleynikov was granted bail even though Facciponte described the dangers of his release to the community. Not only did Aleynikov, a dual Russian and U.S. citizen, show up to court on every occasion, he initially even cooperated with authorities when they showed up at his home before he even had legal counsel…turning over his personal computers in his home and answering the FBI’s questions.