Sergey Aleynikov Guilty

He is the computer programmer who was charged with stealing Goldman Sach's high frequency trading software.

Here are the New York Times and Wall Street Journal stories.

The Times version has a video (unfortunately not embeddable) of Fordham University law professor Joel Reidenbert, who basically says that what would ordinarily be a civil matter, a potential breach of confidentiality agreements, was made into a criminal case to make an example of the "US Attorney doing the heavy lifting for Goldman."

He doesn't come out and say it, but I infer from his that this was a hit by the US Department of Justice, with the active and aggressive collusion of federal judge Denise Cote, to do the Vampire Squid's^* bidding, as the article notes, "During the two-week trial, Judge Denise L. Cote closed the courtroom to the public several times to protect Goldman’s proprietary source code," and "Before dismissing the panel, Judge Cote warned them that if they were going to speak about the case, they must not discuss anything related to Goldman’s code."

It stinks to high heaven.

^*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.