United States v. Agrawal

Judge POOLER concurs in part and dissents in part in a separate opinion.

Defendant Samarth Agrawal was entrusted by his former employer, the French bank Société Générale (“SocGen”), with access to confidential computer code that the bank used to conduct high frequency securities trades. Agrawal abused this trust by printing the code onto thousands of sheets of paper, which he then physically removed from the bank’s New York office to his New Jersey home, where he could use them to replicate SocGen’s trading systems for a competitor who promised to pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars. The question on this appeal is thus not whether Agrawal is a thief. He is. The question is whether Agrawal properly stands convicted for his thievery in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Jed S. Rakoff, Judge) under specific federal laws, namely, the Economic Espionage Act (“EEA”), see 18 U.S.C. § 1832, and the National Stolen Property Act (“NSPA”), see id. § 2314.

Agrawal argues that the charges against him are legally insufficient to state offenses under these statutes, particularly in light of this court’s recent decision in United States v. Aleynikov, 676 F.3d 71 (2d Cir.2012) (reversing EEA and NSPA convictions on grounds of legal insufficiency). He further challenges the factual sufficiency of the evidence to support his NSPA conviction, complains of errors in the jury charge, and argues constructive amendment of the indictment and prejudicial variance in the proof. We reject these arguments and affirm the challenged conviction.

I. Background

A. Agrawal’s Employment with Société Générale

The crimes at issue derive from Agrawal’s employment between early 2007 and November 2009 at SocGen’s New York offices. Agrawal began his career as a “quantitative analyst” in SocGen’s High *238Frequency Trading (“HFT”) Group. The HFT Group engaged in “index arbitrage,” a process that seeks to profit by quickly exploiting fleeting differences in the prices of securities. Toward this end, the HFT Group used two computer trading systems, “ADP” and “DQS” to determine when to purchase and sell securities. Each system was made up of highly complicated computer code developed over the course of some years at a cost of several million dollars to SocGen. Using the ADP and DQS systems, the HFT Group executed trades that generated more than $10 million in annual revenue for SocGen during 2007, 2008, and 2009.

As a quantitative analyst, Agrawal had no access to the code underlying the DQS or ADP systems. Rather, he developed “indicators” for others to use in refining the DQS system. Like other SocGen employees, however, Agrawal was required periodically to commit that neither during nor after his employment would he “disclose or furnish to any entity ... any confidential or proprietary information of [SocGen],” and that, upon termination, he would return all documents, papers, files, or other materials in his possession connected to SocGen. GX 3.

In April 2009, Agrawal was promoted to “trader” for DQS, a position that put him in charge of that system’s day-to-day operations. In this capacity, Agrawal spent several hours each week working with two SocGen computer programmers: Dominic Thuillier — who had written the underlying computer code for DQS — and Richad Idris. On June 12, 2009, Idris, following instructions from Agrawal’s supervisor, copied the DQS code into an electronic folder from which Agrawal could retrieve the data as necessary. In the process, Idris mistakenly also copied the code for three other systems, including ADP, into the folder, even though Agrawal was not authorized to have access to this additional code.

B. Agrawal Steals SocGen’s HFT Code and Offers To Duplicate Its Trading Systems for a Competitor

Unbeknownst to SocGen, Agrawal was then actively pursuing outside job opportunities. Toward that end, on June 8, 2009, he met with representatives of a New York-based hedge fund, Tower Research Capital (“Tower”). Agrawal told Tower that he was running one of SocGen’s two index arbitrage strategies, had a “complete understanding” of that strategy, and could help build a “very similar” system for Tower. Tr. 79.1

On Saturday, June 13 — five days after his meeting with Tower and the day after he acquired access to SocGen’s DQS code — Agrawal came into SocGen’s New York office, printed out more than a thousand pages of the DQS code,2 put the printed pages into a backpack, and physically transported the papers to his apartment in New Jersey. Three days later, on June 16, Agrawal again met with Tower partners to discuss replicating SocGen’s HFT strategies for Tower. On July 10, Tower proposed to hire Agrawal for this *239purpose, offering him salary and bonuses exceeding $500,000, plus 20% of profits generated by the anticipated DQS clone and 10% of profits from any ADP clone. Agrawal informally accepted Tower’s offer in August 2009, but delayed disclosing this fact to SocGen for some months in order both to gain more experience with its HFT systems and to collect an anticipated bonus in October. Meanwhile, during August and September 2009, Agrawal copied and printed hundreds more pages of SocGen’s HFT code — these pertaining primarily to the ADP code to which he had mistakenly been given access — and brought them to his home.

During these months, Agrawal also continued to meet with Tower partners, discussing the HFT systems he expected to develop for them and providing assurances that he could find out whatever information he needed about SocGen’s systems to fill any gaps in his knowledge. At least one of those meetings was recorded by a Tower representative who was present.

Agrawal formally resigned from SocGen on November 17, 2009. In the week before he gave notice, Agrawal deleted from SocGen’s computer system the Word documents into which he had pasted DQS and ADP code, as well as the ADP code files that Idris had mistakenly copied for him. Agrawal’s resignation triggered a leave period of several months, during which he was paid by SocGen but did little work for it. Although Agrawal was prohibited from working for any SocGen competitor while on leave, he continued to meet with Tower personnel, including the computer programmers who were to write the code that would replicate SocGen’s two HFT systems. Agrawal provided Tower personnel with detailed handwritten descriptions of the HFT system he wanted them to build, including mathematical information derived from SocGen’s code that he identified as “what is done in DQS.” Tr. 621.3

C. Agrawal’s Arrest and the Seizure of the Stolen Code

On April 19, 2010, the day Agrawal was to begin work at Tower, FBI agents arrested him at his home in New Jersey. Searches of his apartment resulted in the seizure of thousands of pages of carefully indexed and filed computer code pertaining to SocGen’s two HFT systems. Agrawal admitted to an arresting agent that he had printed out the code and taken it home without disclosing that fact to his SocGen supervisors or receiving authorization to do so.

D. AgrawaVs Prosecution and Conviction

On May 13, 2010, a grand jury sitting in the Southern District of New York charged Agrawal in a two-count indictment with violations of the EEA and the NSPA. After detailing pertinent facts in 18 numbered paragraphs, the indictment charged the two crimes both generally and specifically. With respect to the EEA, the indictment alleged as follows:

From at least on or about June 12, 2009, up through and including in or about April 2010, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, SAMARTH AGRAWAL, the defendant, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, without authorization copied, duplicated, sketched, drew, photographed, downloaded, uploaded, altered, destroyed, photocopied, replicated, transmitted, delivered, sent, *240mailed, communicated, and conveyed a trade secret, as that term is defined in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1839(3), with intent to convert such trade secret, that was related to and included in a product that was produced for and placed in interstate and foreign commerce, to the economic benefit of someone other than the owner thereof, and intending and knowing that the offense would injure the owner of that trade secret, to wit, AGRAWAL, while in New York, New York, without authorization copied, printed and removed from the offices of the Financial Institution proprietary computer code for the Financial Institution’s high frequency trading business, with the intent to use that code for the economic benefit of himself and others.

Indictment ¶ 19. With respect to the NSPA, the indictment alleged as follows:

From at least on or about June 12, 2009, up through and including in or about April 2010, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, SAMARTH AGRAWAL, the defendant, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, transported, transmitted, and transferred in interstate and foreign commerce, goods, wares, merchandise, securities, and money, of the value of $5,000 and more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted and taken by fraud, to wit, AGRAWAL, while in New York, New York, without authorization, removed from the offices of the Financial Institution proprietary computer code for the Financial Institution’s high frequency trading business, the value of which exceeded $5,000, and brought that stolen code to his home in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Indictment ¶ 21.

At trial, Agrawal testified in his own defense. Judge Rakoff would subsequently characterize this testimony as effectively “admitting] under oath all of the elements of the charges.” Tr. 1211. Notably, Agrawal admitted that he had printed out SocGen’s DQS and ADP code and had taken the printed paper copies to his New Jersey home. He acknowledged that such information was proprietary to SocGen and that, nevertheless, he had shared some of it with Tower in order to facilitate his getting a job with that entity. What he denied was that, at the exact time he transported each stack of copied code from New York to New Jersey, his intent was to steal or convert it. He maintained that at that time, he intended to use the code for SocGen’s benefit by following through on a supervisor’s request that he work from home on a project to combine elements of the DQS and ADP systems. Only later, in Agrawal’s telling, did he decide to convert the code for his own benefit and Tower’s.4

Even before Agrawal gave this testimony, Judge Rakoff had cautioned that there was no basis in either the indictment or the law for requiring the government to prove that Agrawal possessed culpable intent at the precise time he printed and removed the HFT code from SocGen’s New York offices. Insofar as Agrawal purported to locate that requirement in the indictment’s “to wit” clauses, Judge Rakoff observed that those clauses could not be read in isolation or divorced from the preceding 18 paragraphs of the indictment, which indicated that the charged *241conduct spanned the period from June 12, 2009, through April 2010. As to the law, Judge Rakoff concluded that the EEA’s intent element could be satisfied by proof that Agrawal possessed the requisite intent to convert when he “removed the code or at any point thereafter when he was still in unauthorized possession of the computer code,” and so charged the jury. Tr. 1006 (emphasis added). In so instructing the jury, Judge Rakoff explained that “without authorization” meant that SocGen “did not approve the removal of the computer code by the defendant for his intended purpose. For example, an employer might approve an employee taking a trade secret home to work on it for the employer’s benefit; but if the employee then starts using the trade secret for his own benefit or the benefit of another, at that point the removal becomes unauthorized.” Id. at 1314. Agrawal did not challenge this interpretation of the EEA, but maintained that to charge it in light of the “to wit” clause effected a constructive amendment of the indictment.

Judge Rakoff had also proposed to charge the jury that to convict Agrawal of the EEA count, the government had to prove that, “as a factual matter, the computer code was related to a product that was, at least in part, produced for, or placed in, interstate or foreign commerce.” Appellee’s Addendum 13. The government remarked that it did not “know[] exactly what the defense is going to argue on this particular point, if anything” and, therefore, requested that the court charge this element by reference to both statutory options, ie., that the computer code was “related to” or “included in” a product produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce. Tr. 885. The court agreed to do so, but observed that it did not foresee this jurisdictional element being “a matter that is going to be materially disputed in any event.” Id. at 885-86. The defense never contended otherwise.5

Nor did the defense object to Judge Rakoff s further instruction as to how the government could satisfy this EEA element: “[I]t is sufficient if the government proves that the purpose of the computer code was to effectuate securities trades, at least some of which were in interstate or foreign commerce.” Id. at 1315. Indeed, Agrawal never suggested to either the district court or the jury that the government had failed to plead or prove that SocGen’s HFT computer code was related to or included in a product produced for or placed in interstate commerce. Rather, when, at the close of all the evidence, Agrawal moved to dismiss the indictment pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 29, he argued only that the two counts “as explicated by the Court’s charge and by the evidence presented by the government in this case constitute[d] a prejudicial variance and a constructive amendment of the charges of the grand jury indictment” as reflected in the “to wit” clauses. Id. at 1214. The *242court denied the motion, and the jury found Agrawal guilty on both the EEA and NSPA crimes charged.

Thereafter, Judge Rakoff calculated Agrawal’s Sentencing Guidelines to recommend a prison sentence in the range of 63 to 78 months. Instead, on February 28, 2011, the court exercised its discretion to impose a non-Guidelines sentence of concurrent 36-month prison terms on the two counts of conviction. This timely appeal followed.

II. Discussion

A. Legal Sufficiency of the Charges 1. Standard of Review

Agrawal challenges the legal sufficiency of both counts of the indictment. As to Count One, he argues that, insofar as the trade secret at issue, SocGen’s computer code, was “included in” SocGen’s HFT systems, those internal, confidential systems cannot qualify as “product[s] ... produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” as required by the EEA. 18 U.S.C. § 1832(a)(2) (emphasis added). As to Count Two, Agrawal asserts that SocGen’s computer code is intangible property and, as such, not “goods, wares, or merchandise” as required by the NSPA. Id. § 2314. Neither argument was ever raised below.

We generally review a challenge to the legal sufficiency of an indictment de novo. See United States v. Shellef, 507 F.3d 82, 104 (2d Cir.2007). Where, as here, however, a defendant failed to raise a sufficiency objection in the district court and presents it for the first time on appeal, we review for plain error. See United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 631, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002) (applying plain-error review to defective indictment claim); United States v. Nkansah, 699 F.3d 743, 752 (2d Cir.2012); United States v. Doe, 297 F.3d 76, 81 (2d Cir.2002). Under that standard,

an appellate court may, in its discretion, correct an error not raised at trial only where the appellant demonstrates that (1) there is an error; (2) the error is clear or obvious, rather than subject to reasonable dispute; (3) the error affected the appellant’s substantial rights, which in the ordinary case means it affected the outcome of the district court proceedings; and (4) the error seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.

United States v. Marcus, 560 U.S. 258, 130 S.Ct. 2159, 2164, 176 L.Ed.2d 1012 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted).

In attempting to demonstrate plain error, Agrawal is entitled to the benefit of our recent decision in United States v. Aleynikov, 676 F.3d 71. See United States v. Garcia, 587 F.3d 509, 520 (2d Cir.2009) (instructing that whether error is “plain” is determined by reference to law at time of appeal); see also Henderson v. United States, — U.S. -, 133 S.Ct. 1121, 1126, 185 L.Ed.2d 85 (2013) (holding that court of appeals is bound by law as it exists at time of appeal); Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) (“[I]t is enough that an error be ‘plain’ at the time of appellate consideration.”). In Aleynikov, another dishonest employee, this one employed by Goldman Sachs, also stole proprietary trading code, in that case by uploading more than 500,000 lines of code to a third-party computer server in Germany, downloading the code from that server to his home computer, and then electronically copying some of the files to other computer devices that he owned. See 676 F.3d at 74. This court reversed defendant’s EEA conviction, holding that to the extent such code was “included in” the employer’s confidential trading system, that system was *243not “a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce,” as required by the EEA, 18 U.S.C. § 1882(a)(2), because the employer never intended to sell or license the system but, rather, went to great lengths to maintain its secrecy, see United States v. Aleynikov, 676 F.3d at 82. The court further reversed defendant’s NSPA conviction, holding that the code, stolen entirely in electronic form, was not tangible property, as necessary to qualify as “goods, wares, [or] merchandise” under 18 U.S.C. § 2314. See id. at 76-79.

While Aleynikov’s construction of the EEA and NSPA controls on the matters it decides, Agrawal’s case is distinguishable from Aleynikov in important respects that preclude him from demonstrating plain error in the legal sufficiency of his indictment. We here briefly summarize what we explain further in this opinion.6

As to the EEA charge, in this case, neither the indictment nor the prosecution’s arguments or the court’s charge identified SocGen’s confidential HFT systems as the “product” relied on to satisfy the crime’s jurisdictional element. Rather, the record indicates that the relevant product was the publicly traded securities bought and sold by SocGen using its HFT systems. Because such securities satisfy the EEA’s jurisdictional element without raising the concerns identified in Aleynikov, Agrawal cannot demonstrate that any pleading insufficiency with respect to SocGen’s HFT systems affected his substantial rights, much less the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.

Insofar as Agrawal invokes Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1957), to urge otherwise, faulting the indictment and charge for failing to specify that only securities, and not SocGen’s HFT systems, could satisfy the EEA’s product requirement, we similarly review only for plain error because no such objection was ever raised in the district court. Agrawal cannot demonstrate Yates error because neither the prosecution nor the court ever presented SocGen’s HFT systems to the jury as “products” satisfying the EEA’s jurisdictional element. In any event, any such error would not be “plain,” because the only possible basis for treating confidential trading systems as products produced for or placed in interstate commerce was that such systems are used to buy and sell securities traded in interstate commerce. In short, no jury could find SocGen’s HFT systems to qualify as EEA products (impermissibly, after Aleynikov), without first finding that the securities traded using those systems were such products. In these circumstances, any Yates error in failing to distinguish between the two possible products could not have affected either Agrawal’s substantial rights or the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.

As to the NSPA charge, Agrawal’s legal-sufficiency challenge fails at the first step of plain-error analysis. Because Agra*244wal — unlike Aleynikov — stole the computer code in a tangible rather than intangible form, i.e., printed onto thousands of sheets of paper, he cannot demonstrate any error, let alone plain error, in charging him with the theft of “goods, wares, [or] merchandise.” 18 U.S.C. § 2314.

2. Count One (EEA)

a. The Alleged Securities Publicly Traded Using SocGen’s Confidential Computer Code Were Legally Sufficient To Satisfy the Product and Nexus Requirements of the EEA’s Jurisdictional Element

The Electronic Espionage Act, as in effect at the time of Agrawal’s indictment and conviction, stated in relevant part as follows:

Whoever, with intent to convert a trade secret, that is related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce, to the economic benefit of anyone other than the owner thereof, and intending or knowing that the offense will injure any owner of that trade secret, knowingly—

(1)steals, or without authorization appropriates, takes, carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception obtains such information;

(2) without authorization copies, duplicates, sketches, draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates or conveys such information; [or]

(3) receives, buys, or possesses such information, knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization;

[is guilty of a crime].

18 U.S.C. § 1832 (emphasis added). The highlighted statutory language — the jurisdictional element of the statute — is the focus of Agrawal’s sufficiency challenge.

In United States v. Aleynikov, this court construed the phrase “a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” as a “limitation” on the scope of the EEA, 676 F.3d at 79, signaling that Congress did not intend to invoke its full Commerce Clause power to criminalize the theft of trade secrets, see id. at 81-82 (citing Supreme Court cases distinguishing between legislation invoking Congress’s full power over activity substantially “affecting commerce” and legislation using more limiting language).7 Aleynikov explained that for a product to be “placed in” commerce, it must have “already been introduced into the stream of *245commerce and have reached the marketplace.” Id. at 80. Products “being developed or readied for the marketplace” qualified “as being ‘produced for,’ if not yet actually ‘placed in,’ commerce.” Id. But a “product” could not be deemed “produced for” commerce simply because its “purpose is to facilitate or engage in such commerce”; such a construction of the EEA’s product requirement would deprive the statutory language of any limiting effect. Id. at 80-81 & n. 5 (noting that government had been “unable to identify a single product that affects interstate commerce but that would nonetheless be excluded by virtue of the statute’s limiting language”).

Aleynikov’s construction of the phrase “a product that is produced for or placed in interstate commerce” controls on this appeal. We note, however, that the reversal of Aleynikov’s EEA conviction was based on the application of that phrase to the particular “product” that was the basis of the jurisdictional allegation in his case. As we explain below, the present case was submitted to the jury on a very different product theory than that relied on in Aleynikov. Thus, the same construction that prompted reversal in Aleynikov leads to affirmance here.

In Aleynikov, the EEA charge was submitted to the jury on the theory that the trade secret converted by the defendant, ie., the proprietary computer code, was “included in” a single product: Goldman Sachs’s confidential trading system. The jury instructions in Aleynikov unambiguously stated that “[t]he indictment [in that case] charges that the Goldman Sachs high-frequency trading platform is a product,” and that the jury’s responsibility was to “determin[e] whether the trading platform was produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce.” United States v. Aleynikov, No. 10-cr-96 (DLC), Tr. 1546-47 (emphasis added). This had been the court’s and the parties’ understanding of the Aleynikov indictment from the start. In its opinion denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment, the court noted the parties’ agreement “that the trade secret at issue in [the EEA Count] is the source code, and that the relevant ‘product’ is the Trading System.” United States v. Aleynikov, 787 F.Supp.2d 173, 178 (S.D.N.Y.2010). It was on this understanding that this court held the Aleynikov indictment legally insufficient. As Aleynikov construed the phrase “a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce,” Goldman Sachs’s trading system could not constitute such a product because Goldman Sachs “had no intention of selling its HFT system or licensing it to anyone.” United States v. Aleynikov, 676 F.3d at 82. To the contrary, the value of the system depended entirely on preserving its secrecy. See id.

Agrawal submits that Aleynikov mandates the same conclusion here because the computer code at issue, like the code in Aleynikov, was included in a confidential HFT system. But this case differs from Aleynikov in an important respect. Here, neither the prosecution nor the district court presented the case to the jury on the theory that SocGen’s trading system was the “product” placed in interstate commerce. Nor did they suggest that the EEA’s jurisdictional nexus was satisfied by computer code (the stolen trade secret) being “included in” that “product.” Rather, the record reveals that EEA jurisdiction was here put to the jury on a more obvious, convincing — and legally sufficient — theory that was not pursued and, therefore, not addressed in Aleynikov: that the securities traded by SocGen using its HFT systems, rather than the systems themselves, were the “produces] ... placed in” interstate commerce. Under that theory, the jurisdictional nexus was *246satisfied because SocGen’s stolen computer code “related to” the securities (the product) it identified for purchase and sale.

While Agrawal’s indictment did not state this theory in so many words, it did allege that SocGen engaged in “high-frequency trading in securities” on national markets “such as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ Stock Market.” Indictment ¶¶ 1, 4. This effectively identified securities as products traded in interstate commerce.8 At trial, the prosecution offered evidence proving the allegation. Moreover, in summation, it argued that although little had been said about the requirement that the stolen computer code “relate[ ] to a product that was produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce,” the element was satisfied by evidence that SocGen’s trading system was designed to buy and sell “stocks and futures” on national exchanges. Tr. 1258. To be sure, in Aleynikov, the prosecution made a virtually identical argument, see United States v. Aleynikov, No. 10-cr-96 (DLC), Tr. 1485-86, but in that case, as we have already observed, the government and the court elsewhere specifically identified the trading system as the relevant product. Where, as here, no pleading, argument, or charge ever labeled SocGen’s trading system a product — much less the product produced for or placed in interstate commerce on which the government relied to satisfy the EEA’s jurisdictional element — the quoted government argument is more reasonably understood to identify the stocks and futures bought and sold on national exchanges as the products placed in interstate commerce. Indeed, the district court effectively clarified this point by referencing only securities as the relevant product in charging the jury on *247the EEA’s jurisdictional element: “[I]t is sufficient if the government proves that the purpose of the computer code [i.e., the trade secret at issue] was to effectuate securities trades, at least some of which were in interstate or foreign commerce.” Tr. 1315. In contrast to Aleynikov, the court here made no mention of the confidential HFT system. Of course, the EEA further requires a nexus between the converted trade secret and the product produced for or placed in interstate commerce. See 18 U.S.C. § 1832(a) (requiring that trade secret “relate[] to” or be “included in” product). In Aleynikov, where the employer’s HFT system was the sole product at issue, the prosecution contended that the stolen computer code was included in that product. Where, as here, the relevant product is publicly traded securities, the statute’s “related to” provision comes into play: Was the stolen code related to traded securities? We answer that question “yes.”

In so doing, we note that Aleynikov never had to construe the EEA’s “related to” or “included in” provision because it determined that Goldman Sachs’s confidential HFT system was not a product produced for or placed in interstate commerce.9 Nevertheless, Aleynikov is instructive for our own assessment of the nexus provision insofar as it cites the “basic interpretive canon” that a statute should be construed to give effect to “all its provisions, so that no part will be inoperative or superfluous.” 676 F.3d at 81 (internal quotation marks omitted). Consistent with this canon, the term “related to” cannot be construed as coextensive with “included in.” Rather, the nexus provision must be read to indicate that a trade secret may relate to a product placed in or produced for interstate commerce, without being included in that product.

As the Supreme Court has recognized, the ordinary meaning of “related to” is “broad”: “ ‘to stand in some relation; to have bearing or concern; to pertain; refer; to bring into association with or connection with.’ ” Morales v. Trans World Airlines, 504 U.S. 374, 383, 112 S.Ct. 2031, 119 L.Ed.2d 157 (1992) (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 1158 (5th ed.1979)) (holding state airfare-advertisement rules preempted by federal statute as “relating to [air carriers’] rates, routes, or services”); see Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U.S. 85, 97, 103 S.Ct. 2890, 77 L.Ed.2d 490 (1983) (observing that law “ ‘relates to’ an employee benefit plan, in the normal sense of the phrase, if it has a connection with or reference to such a plan,” and on this basis holding state statute preempted in part by ERISA). For this reason, the Supreme Court has cautioned that the term must be read in context. For example, where “related to” is used in legislation creating a discrete exception to a general rule, it may not be construed so expansively as to swallow the general rule. See, e.g., New York Conf. of Blue Cross v. Travelers Ins., 514 *248U.S. 645, 655, 115 S.Ct. 1671, 181 L.Ed.2d 695 (1995) (declining to accord usual expansive meaning to term “related to” in construing ERISA preemption provision where general presumption against preemption would thereby be “read ... out of the law”); Havana Club Holding, S.A. v. Galleon S.A., 203 F.3d 116, 123 (2d Cir.2000) (declining to accord broad construction to term “related to” as used in statutory exception to prohibition because doing so would swallow much of prohibition). No such concern arises here, despite our colleague’s conclusory contention otherwise. See post at 268. The EEA’s nexus provision creates no exception to an otherwise applicable general rule; rather, it signals Congress’s intent to exercise its Commerce Clause authority to address the theft of trade secrets. See generally S.Rep. No. 104-359, at 13-14 (1996) (stating intent to “promote the development and lawful utilization of proprietary economic information by protecting it from theft, unauthorized misappropriation or conversion”).

To be sure, in Aleynikov, the court concluded that Congress did not exercise its full Commerce Clause authority in the EEA because it limited the products that could satisfy the statute’s jurisdictional requirement to those “produced for or placed in” interstate commerce. The statutory text provides no similar basis for concluding that, once a product so produced or so placed is identified, Congress intended further to limit the EEA’s reach through a restrictive nexus provision. The use of so deliberately expansive a term as “related to” hardly signals such intent. Nor can it be inferred from the EEA’s legislative history. See generally H.R.Rep. No. 104-788 (indicating intent to protect not only trade secrets integral to “product,” such as “production processes” and “technology schematics,” but also trade secrets some levels removed therefrom, such as “bid estimates” and “production schedules”). Accordingly, we conclude that the term “related to,” as used in the EEA’s nexus provision, is intended to reach broadly rather than narrowly, consistent with its usual meaning.10

On this appeal, we need not delineate the outer limits of that reach because we easily conclude that SocGen’s HFT code related to publicly traded securities in such a way as to bring the theft of the HFT code within the EEA. The code existed for the sole purpose of trading in securities, and its considerable value derived entirely from the existence of a market for securities. In short, the confidential code was valuable only in relation to the securities whose interstate trades it facilitated.

Because publicly traded securities thus satisfy the product and nexus requirements of the EEA’s jurisdictional element, Agrawal cannot satisfy the final two prongs of plain-error review in complaining of legal insufficiency in the pleading or proof of this element.

b. Agrawal Cannot Demonstrate Plain Yates Error

Rather than dispute that securities are products placed in interstate and foreign commerce or that SocGen’s HFT computer code related to such securities, Agrawal argues on this appeal that the government should not be permitted to rely on securities to defeat his legal sufficiency challenge to the EEA charge because securities were never specifically identified as the product relevant to EEA jurisdiction in the district court. Further, he asserts that to allow the government to argue that securities *249could support the EEA’s jurisdictional element even if SocGen’s HFT system could not, would run afoul of Yates v. United, States, 354 U.S. at 311, 77 S.Ct. 1064 (identifying error in conviction if “verdict is supportable on one ground but not on another, and it is impossible to tell which ground the jury selected”).

The first part of Agrawal’s argument rests on a mistaken factual premise. As we have discussed supra at 246-47, the record shows that the district court’s jury instructions specifically cast the jurisdictional issue by reference only to “securities, at least some of which were in interstate or foreign commerce,” Tr. 1315, with no mention of the confidential trading system. To the extent Agrawal faults the indictment for failing to specify securities as the jurisdictionally relevant product, this argument is unconvincing because the indictment does not specifically identify anything as the product relied on to satisfy the jurisdictional element.11 If, as Agrawal now contends, SocGen’s confidential HFT system could not, as a matter of law, be the product supporting jurisdiction, he can hardly claim, in the absence of any pleading, argument, or charge identifying it as such, that he or the jury would reasonably have understood that system to be the alleged basis for jurisdiction rather than the securities that were repeatedly identified at trial as items traded in interstate commerce.12

As for Agrawal’s Yates argument, we note that, before the district court, he never faulted the indictment for failing to specify the product establishing jurisdiction, never sought particulars on this point, and never suggested to the district judge that allowing the case to go to the jury without clarifying the specific product at issue risked Yates error. The reason for the omission is obvious from the record. Agrawal made what the district court characterized as “a calculated strategic call,” Sent. Tr. 32, e