Federal Agents Couldn't Help But Listen In On Weight Lifter Turned Accused Insider Trader Craig Drimal's "Deeply Personal" Conversation With His Wife
Remember Craig Drimal? To recap, Drimal was working at a gym called Vertical way back in the day when he met a guy named David Slaine, with whom he “quickly formed a friendship based on a shared passion for weight lifting and their mutual ability to bench-press 400 pounds." Drimal and Slaine became so close that later, when Slaine got a job at this hedge fund called Galleon, he convinced the boss to hire his buddy Craig- then working as a bouncer at the Roxy– as an assistant at the firm. Something must have happened to damage the bond, though (perhaps something at the gym involving spotting) because in 2007, when Slaine was approached by the FBI who told him they'd cut a deal if he helped them build their case, he jumped at the chance to rat out Craig. (Slaine-- who once got into an argument about inside info with his Galleon boss while the two were taking a steam, and proceeded to slap him in the face-- told prosecutors his friend was part of an “insider-trading conspiracy involving a wide ring of other hedge-fund managers and lawyers.”)
Anyway, the Feds have been recording Drimal's conversations for a while now, and as wiretaps seem to be an increasingly effective tool in suggesting one's participation in insider trading (particularly when the individual in question says stuff like "thanks for the non-public material information you gave me that I traded on"), prosecutors would like to use them in Drimal's upcoming trial. His defense team would prefer a jury not hear the wiretaps, and while Judge Richard J. Sullivan denied the request for a dismissal, he did note that the authorities went a bit too far when they listened in on heated convos between Craig and the Mrs. that one can only assume covered topics such as whose turn it was to take out the trash and ED.
"The court is deeply troubled by this unnecessary, and apparently voyeuristic, intrusion into the Drimals' private life," the judge wrote in his ruling Wednesday. The wiretaps of Mr. Drimal's calls, which began in late 2007, were the first in which the technique was used in an insider-trading case, prosecutors have said. In allowing the recordings into evidence, Judge Sullivan said the wiretap as a whole was "professionally conducted and generally well-executed."...But Sullivan, at a hearing in March, called the agents' performance with respect to the spousal calls "an embarrassment" and "disgraceful."
In his ruling, he said an agent had monitored "almost four minutes of a 6½-minute call while Drimal and his wife had a deeply personal and intimate discussion about their marriage." The agent then listened to an entire 19-second call placed a minute later that was a continuation of the same discussion, the judge said. An agent also listened to a 52-second message in which Mr. Drimal's wife discussed intimate aspects of their relationship. Another call was "obviously a marital spat," the judge wrote. In two others, he said, the couple discussed "patently nonpertinent subjects" such as their children and home-renovation projects.
