A jury convicted a former Goldman Sachs computer programer on criminal charges of stealing secret high-frequency trading code from Wall Street's most influential bank.

Sergey Aleynikov, 40, was indicted in February under the Economic Espionage Act on accusations he copied and removed computer code from Goldman in June 2009 before taking a new job with Teza Technologies LLC, a high-frequency trading start-up firm.

Jurors reached their verdict after a two week-long trial in U.S. District Court in New York. They deliberated for about six hours.

Aleynikov's lawyer contended that his client may have breached Goldman's confidentiality policy but he did not harm and could not harm the firm.

The case is USA v Aleynikov, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-96.

(Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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