Ex-Simons Employees Say Firm Pursued Illegal Trades (Correct) By Katherine Burton and Richard Teitelbaum (Corrects where Renaissance is based in first paragraph.) July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Two former employees of Renaissance Technologies Corp., sued by the East Setauket, New York-based firm for theft of trade secrets, said the company violated securities laws and ``encouraged'' them to help. Renaissance, the largest hedge-fund manager, sought to block Alexander Belopolsky and Pavel Volfbeyn from using the allegations as a defense in the civil trade-secrets case. The request was denied in a July 19 order by New York State judge Ira Gammerman, who wrote that the firm provided no evidence to dispute the claims. The company denied the former employees' claims. ``The decision on this procedural motion makes no determination that there is any factual substance to the allegations,'' Renaissance said in a statement to Bloomberg News. ``These baseless charges are merely a smokescreen to distract from the case we are pursuing.'' Renaissance, run by billionaire investor James Simons, sued Belopolsky and Volfbeyn in December 2003, accusing them of misappropriating Renaissance's trade secrets by taking them to another firm, New York-based Millennium Partners LP. Renaissance settled its claims against Millennium in June. The men, who both hold Ph.D.'s in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked for the company from 2001 to mid-2003, according to the court document. ``We think the allegations are very serious and will have a significant impact on the outcome of the litigation,'' said Jonathan Willens, an attorney representing Volfbeyn and Belopolsky. ``We continue to think the allegations by Renaissance concerning the misappropriation of trade secrets is frivolous.'' More: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agxVXC.r9Edw
True story. Last Friday I was driving by their offices and there was a guy pulling out of the driveway in a white Lexus. He had his left turn signal on but made a right hand turn. He drove down route 25A a bit more with his turn signal on and then made another right turn. I was in a bad mood from sitting in LIE traffic for so long so the little voice in my head said, "What an idiot!". Later on I thought it was funny to be calling an employee who works for such a great firm an "idiot". In regards to the article, sounds like a 'he said she said '' sort of thing.