A former Goldman Sachs programmer accused of stealing secret trading software has won another legal round against the Wall Street giant.
Sergey Aleynikov shouldn’t have been arrested in July 2009, and his property seized, New York State Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel ruled Friday.
The feds arrested Aleynikov after Goldman reported him to the Manhattan US Attorney. He was charged with stealing source code for high-frequency trading as he was headed to a startup.
A federal jury found Aleynikov guilty and sentenced him to eight years in prison. But the conviction was overturned on appeal.
He was released from prison only to be charged in state court by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
In Friday’s decision, Zweibel bashed the FBI and the agent who arrested him. The judge said the FBI didn’t get warrants and that Agent Michael McSwain made “mistakes of law” in charging him.
“As a result of Agent McSwain’s mistakes of law, defendant’s arrest and the seizure of his property was without probable cause,” Zweibel wrote in the decision.
The judge said the property that was seized and later given to the DA’s office shouldn’t have been and is no longer admissable in court.
“After he was acquitted, his property should have been returned to him,” Aleynikov’s lawyer, Kevin Marino, told The Post.
Last year, a judge ruled that Goldman must pay Aleynikov’s legal bills because he was still working for the company at the time of his arrest.
David Wells, a Goldman spokesman, and Joan Vollero, for the DA’s office, declined to comment.