Ex-US congressman among 9 charged in insider trading cases
NEW YORK » A former U.S. congressman from Indiana, technology company executives, a man training to be an FBI agent, and an investment banker were among nine people charged in four separate and unrelated insider trading schemes revealed on Monday with the unsealing of indictments in New York City.
It was one of the most significant attacks by law enforcement on insider trading in a decade, and a prosecutor and other federal officials pledged fresh enthusiasm for similar prosecutions in the future. They said the cheating resulted in millions of dollars of illegal profits for defendants situated on both coasts and in middle America.
Stephen Buyer was accused in court papers of engaging in insider trading during the $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, announced in April 2018. An indictment identified him as someone who misappropriated secrets he learned as a consultant to make $350,000 illegally.
Buyer, 63, of Noblesville, Indiana, was arrested Monday in his home state. He served on committees with oversight over the telecommunications industry while a Republican congressman from 1993 through 2011.
He was described as making purchases of Sprint securities in March 2018 just a day after attending a golf outing with a T-Mobile executive who told him about the company's then-nonpublic plan to acquire Sprint, according to a civil case brought against
Buyer by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a federal court in Manhattan.
In a second prosecution, three executives at Silicon Valley technology companies were charged with trading on inside information about corporate mergers that one of them learned about from his employer.
An indictment accused Amit Bhardwaj, 49, of San Ramon, California, who was the chief information security officer of Lumentum Holdings Inc., of using secrets to trade illegally and then giving the information to criminal associates, including four friends. The SEC said Bhardwaj and his friends generated more than $5.2 million in illicit profits by trading ahead of two corporate acquisition announcements.
In a third case, Seth Markin, of Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania — a man who was training to be an FBI agent — allegedly stole inside information from his then-girlfriend who was working at a major Washington D.C. law firm. According to court papers, he and a friend made more than $1.4 million in illegal profits after he learned that Merck & Co. was going to acquire Pandion Therapeutics.
In a fourth indictment, an investment banker based in New York was charged with sharing secrets about potential mergers with another person, on the understanding that the pair would share illegal profits of about $280,000.