Former SocGen Employee Found Guilty of Trade Secrets Theft

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A former Société Générale (SocGen) New York trader was found guilty of stealing high-frequency trading software code from the financial services company and using it to develop a similar system for a different company.

Starting with March 2007, Samarth Agrawal, 26, worked as a quantitative analyst and later a trader as part of SocGen’s High Frequency Trading Group at the company's New York offices.

As part of his job, Agrawal had access to portions of code for the high-speed trading software developed and used by SocGen.

On June 12, 2009, the trader was captured by surveillance cameras while printing out the code he had access to and leaving with hundreds of resulting pages in a backpack.

At the time, the Agrawal was already in negotiations with a trading group called Tower Capital Research LLC for a job that required him to build a system similar to the one used by SocGen.

The following month, Tower offered him $575,000 up front and 20 percent of the profits generated by the high frequency system he was supposed to create.

Agrawal continued to work for SocGen until November 17, when he submitted his letter of resignation and went on to prepare for his work at Tower.

During the following months, he disclosed sensitive details about SocGen's system to Tower employees in order to advise them about the upcoming project.

Meanwhile, his former employer figured out the security breach and alerted the authorities. The trader was arrested on April 19, 2010 and when his apartment was searched, police found the printed copy of the stolen code.

Agrawal, 26, was found guilty of theft of trade secrets and interstate transportation of stolen property by a federal jury in New York last Friday. He faces a maximum sentence of ten years in jail for each of the two counts.

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