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THE PROHIBITION OF DOUBLE JEOPARDY DID NOT PRECLUDE THE PROSECUTION BASED UPON THE THEFT OF GOLDMAN SACHS SOURCE CODE UNDER A STATE STATUTE AFTER DEFENDANT’S CONVICTION UNDER A FEDERAL STATUTE WAS REVERSED; THE STATE STATUTE INCLUDED AN ELEMENT NOT INCLUDED IN THE FEDERAL STATUTE (FIRST DEPT).

The First Department determined defendant’s prosecution for unlawful use of secret scientific material did not violate the prohibition against double jeopardy. Defendant, while working for Goldman Sachs, had uploaded source code to a server in Germany. He was first charged under a federal statute, the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA). The Second Circuit reversed the NSPA conviction because the source code was deemed “intangible” at the time of the theft (when it was transmitted) and therefore did not meet the definition of “goods” in the federal statute. However, the state statute under which defendant was subsequently prosecuted, unlawful use of secret scientific material, included tangible electronically reproduced material, and the source code reproduced on the German server met that criteria:

Defendant’s argument rests on the claim that the “goods” element of the NSPA, which undisputedly requires that the property transported be “tangible,” is equivalent to the “tangible reproduction” element of New York’s unlawful use statute. That statute provides that “[a] person is guilty of unlawful use of secret scientific material when, with intent to appropriate . . . the use of secret scientific material, and having no right to do so and no reasonable ground to believe that he [or she] has such right, [the person] makes a tangible reproduction or representation of such secret scientific material by means of writing, photographing, drawing, mechanically or electronically reproducing or recording such secret scientific material” (Penal Law § 165.07). * * *

… [T]he Second Circuit did not hold that the source codes were intangible as they existed on the German server. Rather, it held that “at the time of the theft” … — which was the same as the time that the codes were transmitted — the codes were purely intangible. Because the elements are not equivalent, there is no inconsistency between the Second Circuit’s determination that the codes were intangible when transported and this Court’s determination that defendant made a tangible reproduction when he uploaded them to the German server, where they resided within a physical medium. People v Aleynikov, 2019 NY Slip Op 07211, First Dept 10-18-19

 

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