A U.S. trader has been charged with allegedly stealing trade secrets — source code for a quantitative trading firm’s systems — from his former employer.
In an indictment that was unsealed yesterday in New York, Cheuk Fung Richard Ho was charged with one count of theft and one count of attempted theft of trade secrets, namely the code developed by his former employer, an unnamed global quantitative trading firm.
According to the indictment, in 2021, Ho secretly started his own quantitative trading firm, exploiting his access to employer’s source code — which purportedly cost more than US$1 billion and took years to develop — to build his own firm’s trading systems.
“By stealing these trade secrets, Ho was able to quickly launch [his firm] and begin trading successfully,” it alleged.
It also alleged that Ho sought to conceal the theft by destroying evidence.
“He directed his employees to delete their internal communications and further directed them to delete the source code history for [his firm’s] source code,” it said.
“As alleged, Cheuk Fung Richard Ho abused the trust his former employer placed in him and stole trade secrets to use at his own quantitative trading firm,” said Edward Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a release.
The allegations have not been proven, and he is presumed to be innocent.
Ho was arrested in Los Angeles yesterday, and was to appear before a U.S. district court judge in California.