Former SAC Capital employees continue to be found guilty of insider trading, as when in December Anthony Chiasson was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy. Sentencing is coming up, and federal prosecutors want as much as 10 years for the man. In fact, Chiasson is being threatened with 97 to 121 months behind bar; sentencing will be on May 13 by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan.
That, at least, is shorter than the pre-sentence report a probation officer made for 10 to 12-1/12 years, according to Reuters.
Chiasson was charged after his hedge fund firm, Level Global Investors LP, was raided by the FBI and found to be not exactly on the level. The office closed up shortly after that, and seven people were charged with conspiracy. They were using inside information from Dell, and at one point Chiasson used inside information to bet against Dell and procure in a single trade more than $50 million dollars.
5 of the 7 conspirators confessed, leaving Chiasson as one of the two to maintain his innocence, his former employee, research analyst Spyridon “Sam” Adondakis gave the most damning testimony against his boss, without which the case perhaps could not have been given a guilty verdict. There wasn’t much as far as wire tapping to use as evidence, only a scattered bit of texting and emails – the conspiracy was tight and didn’t leave any smoking guns.
“With today’s guilty verdicts, Todd Newman [the other conspirator who pled innocent] and Anthony Chiasson join the ranks of high-level investment fund managers who are being made to answer for their extraordinary bad risk-reward analysis about what is right and what is is wrong,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, as reported by Dealb%k.
Chiasson’s lawyers meanwhile are hoping the sentence will be lenient on the grounds that he has a wife and two children, and also was philanthropic with his money.