For some time, the media has covered the prosecution of a former Citadel, LLC employee, Yihao Pu, for allegedly stealing Citadel’s trade secrets. The recent guilty plea of another Citadel LLC employee, Sahil Uppal, highlights the potential consequences of complicity in trade secrets theft.
In his plea deal earlier this month, Uppal admitted that he transferred Citadel’s intellectual property (consisting of computer code) to Pu without Citadel’s authorization or approval. Additionally, Uppal admitted that, after he learned that Citadel representatives had confronted Pu about having obtained confidential business information from Citadel, he and a third person removed certain computer equipment from Pu’s apartment to impede the investigation into Pu’s conduct. In the plea deal, Uppal pled guilty to obstruction of justice and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.