Bo Zhang, 33, was arrested in May and admitted downloading the code - used by the US Treasury to manage billions of dollars of daily transfers - to a portable hard drive and his home computer. The transferred code had cost $9.5 million to develop, the Fed said.

Prosecutors had been seeking an 18-month prison sentence for the crime, which Zhang committed while employed by an unidentified third party contractor. In sparing a prison stretch, US District Court judge Paul Gardephe noted that the code had not been handed over to anyone else and was still being used by the government.

Sentencing included three years of supervised release along with home confinement. Zhang also faces the threat of deportation.