Fund analyst given nearly 4 years in prison

NEW YORK — A former investment fund analyst for Michael Dell’s personal investment firm, MSD Capital, was sentenced Wednesday to three years and nine months in prison for an insider trading conviction.

John Afriyie, 29, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who said he would have imposed a sentence of three years or less if Afriyie had admitted his crimes rather than gone to trial.

“Your fraud was a classic instance of insider trading,” Engelmayer told Afriyie, a Freehold, N.J., resident who apologized to family and friends before the plea was announced.

A jury convicted him in January of securities and wire fraud, finding that he earned over $1.5 million in illicit profits in early 2016.