When it comes to hedge fund paranoia, few can hold a light to the world’s undisputed leader: Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater – the former employer of current FBI director James Comey – which in addition to maintaining absolute secrecy about its operations, policies and culture, and vigorously pursuing anyone who disseminates Dalio’s famous morning notes, has relentlessly sued any former employees who breach the company’s notorious non-compete. And now, Bridgewater has lashed out at a 24-year-old computer contractor from Hamden, whom it accuses of stealing confidential documents.
Sankaranarayan Subramanian, a consultant working on-site at Bridgewater who was employed by an outside firm, was identified as the alleged thief.
According to the Hamden Patch, authorities began investigating the theft of “confidential Bridgewater IT configuration documents” from the company’s 1 Glendinning Place headquarters in November of last year.
“Bridgewater IT Security determined that Subramanian had emailed himself, on several occasions, multiple confidential Bridgewater IT documents from his Bridgewater email account to his personal email account without authorization,” wrote Westport police in a statement.
“Subramanian intentionally and without authorization made copies (in the form of print and email data transfer) of data residing in the Bridgewater Associates computer system and by taking data intended for the use by that computer system.”
This is similar to the accusation that was lobbed by Goldman at its HFT programmer Sergey Aleynikov in 2009, who was fired, and spent years in prison, and who to this day is fighting the charge of corporate espionage despite being exonerated on at least one occasion.
As the Patch adds, police obtained a warrant for Subramanian’s arrest, and on March 23, Westport detectives arrested him at his Hamden residence.
The charge? E-Crime of the First Degree which includes Theft of Computer Services. Subramanian was released on a $100,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in Norwalk Superior Court on April 3.
It is unclear what documents the young consultant may have “stolen”, copied, or emailed himself. The company’s unprecedented secrecy has in recent months prompted some fringe speculation of impropriety surrounding Dalio’s investing operation.
