Senate Report: Bush Missed Chance To Catch Bin Laden
2nd Avenue Subway Cooling System Will "Blight" UES
Leftover Metrocard Change Infuriates Some
Diners: Calories Counts Are Ruining Fancy Restaurants
State Dinner Party Crashers Want Money For Interview
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged 14 people in an insider trading ring that involved coded text messages on disposable cell phones, information from a Morgan Stanley lawyer, and secret meetings at the Oyster Bar. Wonder if they also shared information via the Whispering Gallery, too.
The SEC says there were two schemes. One at UBS where an executive director gave tips to other traders for a share of the profits in cash. According to the Daily News, Michael Guttenberg of UBS suggested scam at an Oyster Bar meeting in 2001; apparently he offered this insider trading plan so he wouldn't have to pay back money he owed his trader buddy!
Some of the UBS scheme participants were involved in the Morgan Stanley scheme, which used inside information from Morgan Stanley's compliance lawyer. What's more, compliance lawyer Randi Collota would pass tips about Morgan Stanley's deals to her husband and a day trader, who then gave information to Bear Stearns. That's company loyalty, for you.
The people involved made $14-15 million, with participants buying things like a boat called "Enough is Never Enough." The SEC called it the "one of most pervasive Wall Street insider-trading rings since the days of Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine." And people wonder why Wall Street types are so reviled?
Photograph of the Oyster Bar by New York Daily Photo
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
With money like that, I would have deposited the cash into a Swiss account and not afraid of jail time.
No one can get money back from these guys.
*** I am in the wrong job.
I need a job as a
Compliance officer so that I can play this game
of insider trading.
Ethics school ? These guys must have received some training on ethics. If they did not, the firms they work for are equally guilty. For their firms do not believe in ethical practices, and promote unethical behavior.
If the firms provided training, the training director should be fired.
The training didn't work.
The policy maker should be fired, for there was no incentive to be loyal to one's boss and be ethical.
For that very reason, Compliance officer's tend to get there activities scrutinized even more than normal. Bet the people who got her info gave her up when they made one too many "lucky" buys...
Maybe the gov can't get their money but I hope they get that dumb boat.
friken greedy bastards.
I always wonder in cases like these, what ever happens to that $14-15 million?
I'm assuming they tucked some of it away and are still pretty damn rich when they get out of jail or whatever, but does any of it get reclaimed? if so, by whom? does the government take it?
Can I buy that boat at one of those auctions they advertise on late night cable?
The SEC usually hits the individuals with a TRO (temp restraining order) before they know that they have been caught. All of their accounts are frozen and all of their communications are monitored. All accounts, technically even their metrocards. And there is always a paper trail. A large percentage of the money, if the fraud is discovered at all, can be recovered. There is almost no way to get cash out of a brokerage house in unmarked 20s. The Money then goes to the investor class who paid more than they should have for a security because the insiders pumped up the price. If nothing else the individuals involved will become pariahs. Banished. Many of them end up selling used cars in Nowheresville, NJ or some other life that closely resembles hell...which is what they deserve.
I say let's take that boat and
sell its services for hourly fees.
That's what I would do If I were the Feds.
I will pay $5 an hour per person is not a bad deal.
We just need a FREE boat captain for each trip.
Investment banker: "B-b-b-but what we do helps to economy."
Yeah, right. A bunch of scumbags get rich and everybody else suffers.
I say give them the death penalty. In order to make $15 million, people had to lose $15 million. Don't forget that. I'd pay $9.99 on pay-per-view to watch these criminals bite it. People who work in financial services are the dregs of humanity.
It is my understanding that fraud is way different than bankruptcy (where it is possible to shield some assets from the authorities). For example, even if someone has a house worth millions in the state of Florida, it would be exempted from being liquidated by creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.
I believe OJ Simpson is a good example of someone who shielded his assets by investing in a home in Florida.
Maybe someone knowledgeable could expand on this issue?
Suffers? point me to a sane and sober person who is suffering. And you can hate me and call me a 'dreg,' but you need me a great deal more than I need you. You'll likely say otherwise, you are incorrect. Try and enjoy the lifestyle that my expertise underwrites.
That said, the guilty should not escape punishment.
Grey Suit, thanks for proving my point for me. Let them eat cake, I guess, huh?
Cake, cookies, 4.6% unemployment, it's an all you can eat buffet. Whatever you want you can have, courtesy of fully functional capital markets, and you don't have to work to hard to have it. Enjoy.
Right. 4.6% unemployment. With the Bush administration including the military in unemployment figures for the first time in history (so we know that it's closer to 8% or so). Also, wages have been stagnant for over a decade. Bite me, you idiot.
If I "tried to enjoy the lifestyle that your expertise underwrites" I'd be a grade-A twunt. Also, what kind of marketingdouchebag illogical doublespeak is that? It makes no sense. Have you amortized your morality across a network-centric model too? Your expertise enriches your own ass, and any trickledown is entirely offset by the corrosion of community, accountability and proprtionality that your kind champion every day. Look, I can use big words too!
You're a hollow vapid shell who will die one day, less loved becuase your job entails screwing people over in increasingly less accountable ways. People secretly loathe you and your peers would kill you for some of that pie. History will judge you as a parasite.
But enjoy your 'lifestyle' that your 'expertise' underwrites. We don't. Fucktard.
I was intimately connected to one of the biggest hedgies on Wall Street for over ten years. For a very long time he hid from me that fact that he was a theif. He traded on inside information daily, front running, naked shorts, the who deal.
I ended our relationship at that point. He was the worst human being I have ever know. He had morphed into a grotesque pig who got off on abusing people. I'm sure there are many honest people working the street but I never met one.
The big ones are pretty much sociopaths.
I'm thinking that there will be quite a few more charges and arrests before this chapter is done.