Picture 1835.pngYou know, you think you’ve met a nice, classy lady on Ashleymadison.com, a website who’s tagline is “life is short, have an affair,” and the next thing you she’s selling you out and you’re being convicted on six counts of securities fraud. James Gansman knows what we’re talking about, as he and his ho, Donna Murdoch, are the subject of a Wall Street Journal story along those lines. Gansman, an Ernst and Young partner who advised companies doing mergers about how to combine work forces before he got fired, met Murdoch in 2004. They would meet up in hotels in Philadelphia, New York and California (and when they weren’t together, exchanged 7,000 phone calls over the course of two years), but what really got Big D going was this kinky little game they’d play, which went something like this:

Eventually the two settled into a comfortable day-to-day routine in their respective offices in New York and Philadelphia, staring at the same Yahoo Finance screen. Mr. Gansman led Ms. Murdoch in a guessing game about which deals he was working on, she said.
“The game was that I wouldn’t be looking and he would give me hints: The market cap of two billion or market cap of 400 billion, and here’s what they do, and he’d read it to me, and ultimately make sure I guessed,” Ms. Murdoch testified. Before long, the guessing game fell away. Mr. Gansman told her more directly about upcoming deals of Ernst clients, she said.

Oh, but that wasn’t enough for Donna. She wasn’t satisfied. She needed more (money), so she met another dude who could get the job done (monetarily) and started two-timing Gansman.

The information wasn’t enough to pull off an insider-trading plan. Ms. Murdoch was in such financial difficulty — she and her husband owed $1.45 million on a subprime home mortgage — that she needed money to make trades.
She said she found the financial support of another man she met on Ashleymadison.com. According to her, he was Richard Hansen, currently listed as the chairman of an Oaks, Pa., broker-dealer called Keystone Equities Group. Ms. Murdoch became an employee of Keystone, and she shared Mr. Gansman’s stock tips with Mr. Hansen, she testified. She didn’t tell either man about her relationship with the other, she said.

As time went on, Mr. Gansman grew closer to Ms. Murdoch. He shared part of his 2006 bonus check, making Ms. Murdoch a $25,000 loan, she said. In one instance, he leaked news of a coming takeover with Ms. Murdoch, to be used in one of her children’s stock-market simulation games at school, she testified.
Between November 2005 and September 2007, Ms. Murdoch traded on at least 18 different Ernst deals, netting about $400,000 in profits, prosecutors said.


Insider Affair: SEC Trial of the Heart
[WSJ via clusterstock]

Comments (29)

  1. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:26 PM

    sluttttt

  2. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:26 PM

    what’s the name of that site again?
    -ruth madoff

  3. Posted by wcburrs87 | July 29, 2009 at 5:28 PM

    Now if only the journal could cover bacne with the same fervor that they cover cankles and ashleymadison.com, I would cancel my subscription to ‘Details’.

  4. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:33 PM

    Yahoo Finance? Really?

  5. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:33 PM

    You definitely get better stories in a depression than in a bull market.

  6. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:34 PM

    in his defense….
    I was invited to a Big Six holiday party at the Rainbow Room in mid 90s.
    It was all these E&Y, anderson, Pwc partners and their wives.
    Well, 85% of the wives were asian.
    I am sure at one point they were hot or mail order or whatever.
    But, by 50 they all looked like that granny mama’san Hostess you see at chinese/bad sushi reataurants….

  7. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:44 PM

    @4 Please stop denigrating Yahoo! Finance.
    It has the best message boards on the internet and I’ve met some interesting discussions there.
    Sincerely,
    Rahodeb

  8. Posted by Investorcluzo | July 29, 2009 at 5:44 PM

    kbw ceo gets a porn star
    http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/10/nyregion/wall-street-s-racy-insider-trading-trial.html
    the e&y drone goes online to ash-mad…both get busted, have we learned anything?

  9. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:54 PM

    can we get some pics of this bitch?

  10. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 5:59 PM

    @9 is she not the blonde one above?

  11. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:05 PM

    this was a great story… yesterday.

  12. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:05 PM

    @7: too WFMI, did not chew

  13. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:07 PM

    @10: thought the same thing, the guy on the pic has those CPA abs

  14. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:07 PM

    @10: thought the same thing, the guy on the pic has those CPA abs

  15. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:29 PM

    in other news, loans as high as $1.45m were made to subprime borrowers

  16. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:34 PM

    I’m giving tips to a 15-year old at Ashleyforjuniors right now.

  17. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 6:49 PM

    I hope she was really hawt.

  18. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 11:28 PM

    @ KBW…
    …bingo!

  19. Posted by guest | July 29, 2009 at 11:28 PM

    @ KBW…
    …bingo!

  20. Posted by guest | July 30, 2009 at 12:37 AM

    This story gives the term “insider trading” a whole new meaning.

  21. Posted by guest | July 30, 2009 at 9:13 AM

    Ashley Madison is for pikers.
    -Elliot Spitzer

  22. Posted by NAS Keflavik boi | July 30, 2009 at 11:02 AM

    @ 8 -
    Yes – the lesson is – get your gumadas the old-fashioned way… PTA meetings or whilst commuting on the LIRR.

  23. Posted by Benjamin Dover | August 1, 2009 at 12:30 PM

    Oh Bess. Shame on you. Calling someone you don’t even know a “whore.” We’re you a bully when you were a little kid. Or are you that desperate to get readers you don’t care either way. This reminds me of that Paul Newman movie where he punched out the reporter after her subject committed suicide.

  24. Posted by guest | August 1, 2009 at 2:37 PM

    bendover@24 how would you describe a woman that fucks for money? hmm?

  25. Posted by guest | August 27, 2009 at 10:32 AM

    Her whoring, lying and deception have ruined families and damaged 8 children – hope the sex was worth it Donna. May you rot in jail for a very long time.

  26. Posted by guest | August 27, 2009 at 10:34 AM

    Her whoring, lying and deception have ruined families and damaged 8 children – hope the sex was worth it Donna. May you rot in jail for a very long time.

  27. Posted by Someguy | February 16, 2011 at 9:54 PM

    MOM?

  28. Posted by GestPrivate | May 12, 2011 at 8:05 PM

    Ruined families … yes absolutely, and lives and careers. I can’t help to wonder what this has taught her own children. Most people would just declare bankruptcy, not an ideal situation but definitely better than what she chose. Though calling her a two timing whore isn’t nice – we should get our math right, she’s 3 timing. ewe, and where did she find the time to have 7000 phone calls while being a mother, wife and mistress to two men that are her fathers age?

  29. [...] Remember Donna Murdoch? Her story is a bit complicated but essentially: Murdoch and her husband were hard up for some money (they owed $1.45 million on a subprime home mortgage, natch). She decided the best way to tackle the debt was to make some money trading on material non-public information. Getting the tips was easy enough– Murdoch got on AshleyMadison.com where she met an Ernst and Young partner named James Gansman who advised companies doing mergers and was more than happy to give them to her. Only problem was, Big D didn’t have the cash to trade on Gansman’s inside info, so she hopped back on to the adultery site and found another guy who could front the money. That guy was 71 year-old Richard Hansen, who gave her a job at Keystone Equities Group (where he was chairman), plus some of his penis on the side. [...]

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