Was market-rigging computer program Goldman's or U.S. government's?

9:10p ET Friday, March 18, 2011

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

As The New York Times reported today in the story appended here, the computer programmer who got caught stealing Goldman Sachs' computer code for market-rigging operations has been sentenced by a federal judge to an astonishing eight years in prison. The most telling detail about the case may be, as the Times reports seemingly without awareness, the speed with which federal agents acted against the code theft. In early June 2009, the Times reports, the programmer copied the code from the Goldman Sachs computer system to a computer system in Germany. On July 2, 2009, the programmer delivered the code to his new employer in Chicago. He was arrested by six FBI agents the following day at the airport in Newark, New Jersey. The investigation was wrapped up within a month, perhaps in less than three weeks. Would the theft of computer programming from any other company (OK, except maybe JPMorgan Chase) be pursued so vigorously by the federal government when Osama bin Laden and dozens of murderers, bank robbers, and rapists remain on the loose? And was the government really obliging Goldman Sachs here, or was it taking care of itself, the market-rigging computer program really being part of a government operation, considered a matter of national security, like another market-rigging operation, the gold price suppression scheme?

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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Ex-Goldman Programmer Gets Jail Term of 8 Years for Code Theft

By Azam Ahmed
The New York Times
Friday, March 18, 2011


http://www.gata.org/node/9714