A computer programmer working for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently pleaded guilty to theft of government property after stealing proprietary code from the Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program software.
Bo Zhang, a computer programmer and Chinese citizen who has been in the United States on a work visa since 2000, worked as a contract employee for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from May through August of 2011. The Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program Zhang was contracted to work on tracks billions of dollars in transfers as well as account balances between many federal agencies and the Treasury. The Treasury Department is said to have spent $9.5 million developing the software.
Zhang was first questioned by the FBI in August 2011 after claiming he lost an external hard drive which contained the Treasury’s program code. Zhang then admitted that he stolen the code in July copying it to an external hard drive and then to his personal computers. Zhang admitted that he took the program code for private use and so that it would be available to him if he lost his job.
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