back to article Wall Street traders charged with stealing company code via email

Three men have been charged with pilfering trade secrets from a Wall Street firm after two of them emailed themselves computer code belonging to their former employer from their company email accounts. Glen Cressman and Jason Vuu, both former employees of Wall Street firm Flow Traders, were each charged with unlawful …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Idiots

    That is all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Idiots

      No, the whole lot of them are money grabbing manipulators. None of them deserve any sympathy.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: Idiots

        I see no evidence the first poster was expressing any sympathy for either nominal culprits or nominal victims. I read it more as "A curse on both your houses."

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: but experts say it is likely that they wouldn't have to serve any prison time at all

    Of course... since the mishandling was not of US government information.

    1. Don Jefe

      Re: but experts say it is likely that they wouldn't have to serve any prison time at all

      Even if it was sensitive data these guys are in the 'financial sector' so any hard time would likely be extremely limited anyway. We can't be locking up the crooks experts who keep the whole wonky mess from falling over.

  3. h3

    ...

    I still think it is wrong those Norwegians who worked out how to beat the bank systems were charged.

    The banks lost but managed to get away without any liability for their errors. (Sounds like another instance).

  4. Steve Knox
    Holmes

    Sure..

    According to Bloomberg, Vuu was aware that he was doing something illicit, because he would sometimes change the file formats of email attachments in an attempt to conceal what it was that he was sending himself.

    Yeah, because it couldn't be that he just changed the extension of a file to get it past some draconian spam/malware filter.

    1. SolidSquid

      Re: Sure..

      "We detected that your attachment uses a file extension matching the filter of .* which have been blocked for security purposes. If you believe this is in error, please contact your systems administrator by email at buggeroffyouthievingbastards@localhost"

  5. menotu

    Wall St traders committing a crime... you are kidding.. next you be telling me the oil companies are in fixing prices... can't happen .. Obama tells me so...

  6. Cliff

    When everyone surrounding you is a greedy self serving...

    It doesn't feel such a crime if you're surrounded by ***** who will happily screw over whole governments and populations in the name of greed and bonuses.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      I agree with your point entirely, but I am tired of the self-censoring that is continuously going on here.

      We're all adults, there are no kids in these forums (much too boring for them, it's all text and no titties). So, if you want to use the word asshole, let's all be adult enough to use it. And reading "f*ck" has always made me cringe. Come on, people, everyone knows what you're writing, so have the balls to write it properly or write something else entirely.

      There, PC rant ended.

      1. Don Jefe

        (.)(.)

        But to your point, yes, the self censorship stuff is fucking stupid. Sometimes it's like a bunch of school kids: "I'm tellin' on you. You said a bad word." It's just another part of language that adds color and flair to normally dry writing.

      2. Cliff

        @Pascal - swears, actually I agree

        And indeed I normally show my vulgar tongue here without reserve. There is only one word which is still generally considered brutal enough to be considered socially unacceptable even in most adult company. That level of brutality was the only fitting abuse I could think of at the time for that bunch of crooked sociopathic fucking wanknut arseholes upon whom I wish only ill.

      3. Elmer Phud

        yeah but no but

        "So, if you want to use the word asshole, let's all be adult enough to use it. "

        'Arsehole' has a better ring to it

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: yeah but no but

          'Arsehole' has a better ring to it

          I see what you did there (even if you possibly didn't)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Other Methods for Extracting information

    Surely if they had skills to re-purpose code then they could have....

    Copied it to USB

    Printed it out

    Written it down

    Used a screwdriver & borrowed the hard drive for a night

    Used bolt cutters and borrowed the PC for the night

    Surely they would have drawn less attention to their plan if they simply nicked the PC, although I recall a recent hardware burglary where the thieves de-racked hundreds of servers only to painstakingly remove every hard drive and leave them on the data hall floor. Even they weren't that stupid.

    1. Crisp

      Re: Other Methods for Extracting information

      They could have always just read it and memorised it.

      They can't throw you in jail for remembering stuff.

  8. MainframeBob

    Stealing is OK?

    "Their algorithms and code weren't taken or used in any malicious way that damaged or compromised their financial security."

    So the defence argument is that stealing is ok if it dont hurt the victim financialy?

    Is stealing a car, and later leaving it somewhere legal too?

    1. gazthejourno (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Stealing is OK?

      Technically yes, as then it isn't "theft" (which in English law is "to dishonestly appropriate property with the intention to permanently deprive the owner of it"). Leaving the car demonstrates your intention not to permanently deprive the owner of it. Eventually they had to bring in the offence of "taking without consent" to cover car theft/joyriding.

      /thread diversion.

      1. Don Jefe

        Re: Stealing is OK?

        Yep, that's why there are laws for joyriding and laws for grand theft auto. Two different things.

        1. NomNomNom

          Re: Stealing is OK?

          you'd have thought they'd come up with a better name for the law rather than using the title of a contraversial computer game

          1. Don Jefe
            Happy

            Re: Stealing is OK?

            They tested 'Joyriding' as the title in focus groups, but it didn't score well. People seemed to think that name failed to capture the the 'beat the hooker to death with a tire iron' aspects of game play.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stealing is OK?

      only if you are a Wall Street wanker

    3. SolidSquid

      Re: Stealing is OK?

      Stealing a car deprives the owner of the use of it for the duration of the time it's in your possession. Since in this case they were taking a copy of the code this wouldn't apply, so there would be no harm to the owner whatsoever

  9. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    Oh, they're Wall Street traders? They'll probably be charged a small fine and released back into the wild.

  10. Michael Shaw

    what crime have they committed?

    One has to wonder what criminal act they have committed?

    Copying the program? That's civil copyright breach. Not criminal.

    Running the program to guide their investments? I'd find it hard pushed to call that obtaining money by deception.

    I can see plenty of civil law stuff that they could be in breach of, such as employment contracts, duty of confidentiality etc.

    But where is the criminal act?

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      Re: what crime have they committed?

      An offence under their equivalent of our Computer Misuse Act.

    2. Tom 13

      Re: what crime have they committed?

      Based on the article it sounds like the code acquired implemented trade secrets. The crime isn't stealing the code, it's stealing the trade secret. Which is assumed to be damaging to the company and I believe is a criminal offense, just like stealing their servers outright would be.

      It's been 20 years now since I was privy to a trade secret covered by a patent. Given the time period, I assume the patent is expired and I wouldn't be liable for talking about it. It was a very, very small detail. Certainly something any competitor willing to invest in a research team would have found because it was how the patent owning company found it in the first place. But common decency prohibits me from talking about it. That company is the one that spent the money on the research, they are the ones who should benefit from it.

      1. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: what crime have they committed?

        You can have a trade secret on something, or a patent, but not both. The whole point of a patent is that you give up secrecy in return for temporary legal protection.

        Trade secrets give you some protection until someone leaks it out, or figures it out independently of the company. The person leaking it out will get into trouble for leaking it out, but after that, anyone else can publish and use it, because it is no longer a secret.

  11. ecofeco Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Innocent?!

    Typical sociopaths. No clue they did something wrong.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like