Legal News

Prosecutors Say Ex-SocGen Trader Should Get Up To 8 Years In Prison

By Chad Bray

A former Societe Generale trader set to be sentenced next week in the theft of the French bank’s code for its high-frequency trading business should receive up to eight years in prison, prosecutors said in court papers late Thursday.

However, Samarth Agrawal’s lawyer said in court papers earlier this week that “more incarceration is not necessary. A native of India, Agrawal has been in custody since his arrest in April 2010.

For LBers who need a reminder, federal prosecutors in Manhattan alleged Agrawal, 27 years old, printed out copies of the bank’s computer code and planned to use it to build a copy of SocGen’s trading program at a competitor. A jury convicted him of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property in November.

In a filing Thursday, prosecutors said Agrawal should be sentenced within a range of six years, six months to eight years, one month in prison. They claim the intended loss to SocGen was between $7 million and $20 million,. based in part on the profits earned by SocGen from that trading annually in 2007, in 2008 and in 2009.

“The defendant stole his employer’s valuable high-frequency trading code for a simple reason: greed,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas G.A. Brown and Daniel W. Levy said.

Ivan S. Fisher, Agrawal’s lawyer, said SocGen suffered no loss and there was no intent on the part of his client to cause one.

“It is inconceivable that any futher punishment need be inflicted upon this defendant whose awareness on so many levels, whose remorse is felt so deeply and in so many ways, needs anything more to make certain that the law abiding nature of his lifelong way of living, again presented in the letters attached to this submission, is easily sufficient.”

LB note of interest: Fisher defended Jean Orsini in the heroin smuggling case that inspired the movie, “The French Connection,” and Salvatore Catalano in the so-called “Pizza Connection” drug conspiracy case.

Sentencing is set for Monday.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).