MY PAST HINDERS TINDER
Hedgie date woe
The hedge funder who beat Preet Bharara on an insider trading rap now is facing a more daunting foe: Tinder.
Todd Newman, the former Diamondback Capital portfolio manager who got an appeals court in 2014 to toss his insider trading conviction, complained at a panel discussion on Thursday that women on dating apps are Googling him before they ultimately swipe left.
The hedgie’s misadventures in dating were a part of a broader gripe about the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, which held highly publicized press conferences during his legal problems.
Jurors back then probably searched for him online and were tainted by those articles — even though they weren’t supposed to, he said.
“Who doesn’t take out their phone and Google something when they meet somebody for the first time?” he asked.
And even though a New York federal appeals court overturned his conviction, and the Supreme Court dealt Bharara a blow by letting that decision stand, divorced dad Newman said the ladies aren’t so interested in the details.
“On the dating apps that I’m on, the same thing happens,” he told a laughing audience of lawyers.
Bharara didn’t return an email seeking comment, and a spokesman at his former office declined to comment.
In a conversation with reporters after the panel, Newman said he has since quit Tinder. The public comments were Newman’s first in New York since the Supreme Court — which has set a new, tougher, standard for government prosecutors trying insider trading cases — declined to hear his case.
Newman, 52, went on to say that he wasn’t looking to return to Wall Street, and that nobody would probably hire him anyway. He now trades his own account from his home outside Boston, and spends more time with his teenage daughter, he said.
He added that he was able to keep his daughter from finding out about the trial — until her teacher gave her class an assignment.
“At school, they told her to Google your parents’ name and see what comes up,” he said. “She Googled my name and [then] asked her mom if there was another Todd Newman. So we had to tell her.”