Chinese programmer charged with stealing NY Fed software code

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. prosecutors arrested a Chinese computer programmer on charges he stole software code valued at nearly $10 million from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Reuters reported.

Bo Zhang, 32, of Queens, New York, worked as a contract programmer at the bank. He was accused of illegally copying software to an external hard drive, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court in Manhattan.

Authorities said the software, owned by the U.S. Treasury Department, cost about $9.5 million to develop.

A federal magistrate judge ordered Zhang released on $200,000 bail after a brief court hearing. Zhang was charged with one count of stealing U.S. government property, which carries a maximum 10 year prison term.

The complaint, signed by an FBI agent, said Zhang had admitted to copying the code onto a drive and taking it home. Zhang told investigators he took the code "for private use and in order to ensure that it was available to him in the event that he lost his job," the complaint said.

While U.S. intelligence officials have become increasingly worried about economic espionage by China and Russia, cyber crime experts said the case appeared to be one of simple theft.

The code, called the Government-wide Accounting and Reporting Program (GWA), was developed to help track the billions of dollars the United States government transfers daily.