Would-be code thieves watch out. The hammer is coming down hard. Recall that Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs programmer, was convicted of stealing proprietary code used in the investment bank's high-speed trading system in an entertaining December trial. Awaiting sentencing, he was just deemed a flight risk and had his bail revoked. Now he's back in prison.

That followed the conviction of Samarth Agrawal, of Societe Generale, in November for similarly stealing code. Prosecutors charged that Agrawal printed out copies of the bank's computer code in 2009 and planned to use it to for a trading program at a rival bank. The latest is that a judge has sentenced him to three years in prison. It could have been worse; prosecutors were seeking eight years.

To his credit Agrawal admitted guilt. He spoke to the court about the pain he caused his parents, compounded by the "shame" of his knowledge that he acted alone, under nobody's supervision. "What do you do when there is no light? When there is complete darkness? That's your character," he said, reports Courthouse News.

The trial stands as a reminder that you have to think long and hard about putting a computer programmer on the stand in his own defense. The Wall Street Journal reminds us that Argawal "admitted under questioning from his own lawyer at trial to sharing aspects of the bank's computer code with a rival, including details of how it sends orders and its system architecture." That was not the best of moves legally speaking, but you have to admire his honesty in this day and age.

For more:
- here's the Courthouse News article
- here's the Wall Street Journal article

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Update: Aleynikov trial turns on open source issues