Summary

In Chapter 8, the reader returns to the trial of Sergey Aleynikov. Things were not going well for him. The new stock market was incredibly complicated. Concepts like HFT made the jurors’ eyes glaze over. The prosecution, themselves ignorant of finance in many ways, resorted to cheap emotional tricks to persuade the jury in their favor. Even the so-called expert witnesses had only an introductory level of knowledge of what Sergey actually did while employed at Goldman Sachs. Sergey could only sit back in frustration and watch his chances of escaping jail-time go down the drain. Although Sergey was convinced his act was entirely innocent and part of being a programmer, the disinterested jury was more persuaded by slogans such as “take code and you could go to jail” (Page 247). There was no grey area when it came to stealing, and the prosecution knew this...