Insider Trading Case: Options Action a Ticket to ‘Big House’
One of the subjects of the new insider trading charges levied by prosecutors today warned in an intercepted phone call that unusual options activity ahead of deal announcements might be “a ticket right to the [expletive] big house.”
That snippet of an intercepted phone call from February 2008 was included as part of the criminal complaints filed by prosecutors in New York. On either end of the line was Zvi Goffer and Jason Goldfarb, an attorney who allegedly got information and passed it along to Goffer. Here’s the section:
Not for nothing, but insider traders would have good reason to worry that unusual options activity could tip off authorities to their shady dealings. Not long after Dell Inc.’s takeover of Perot Systems Corp. earlier this year, the SEC accused an employee of H. Ross Perot’s investment firm of reaping $8.6 million in illicit profits by buying thousands of stock options on Perot Systems in the weeks before the deal.
Find the original story at WSJ MarketBeat:
Insider Trading Case: Options Action a Ticket to ‘Big House’
