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Convicted Insider Traders Not Convicted Insider Traders Anymore

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Anthony Chiasson and Todd Newman will be enjoying themselves this evening. Preet Bharara, less so.

A federal appeals court dealt the Justice Department a significant defeat Wednesday, overturning two insider trading convictions and potentially constraining prosecutors’ latitude to pursue such crimes. A three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed the definition of what constitutes insider trading and determined prosecutors had taken too broad a view of the law in their multiyear crackdown on Wall Street. The unanimous ruling from the federal appeals court is a stinging rebuke for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, headed by Preet Bharara, which had a near-perfect record in insider trading cases. Its immediate effect is that the convictions of Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson, two portfolio managers who had appealed their 2012 insider-trading guilty verdicts, are overturned. Prosecutors are likely barred from retrying Messrs. Newman and Chiasson because the court dismissed their indictments with prejudice. The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office had planned to retry the cases, according to people familiar with the matter.

Court Overturns Insider-Trading Convictions, a Blow to Justice Department [WSJ]

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Members Of Insider Trading "Club" Were Good At Obtaining Material Non-Public Information, Not So Good At Playing It Cool On Conversations Recorded By The Feds

Later this week, Anthony Chiasson, a Level Global co-founder, and Todd Newman, a former Diamondback portfolio manager, will go to trial in Federal Court for allegedly making $67 million in ill-gotten gains, based on inside information they obtained about Nvidia Corp and Dell Inc. According to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Chiasson and Newman, who've both pleaded not guilty, were able to rack up all their profits by teaming up with a bunch of friends and forming an insider trading club, which is a lot like a book club or fight club in that they took roll, traded canapé duties, and drank Pinot Grigio, but different in that instead of discussing The Art Of Fielding or punching each other in the face, they spent every Monday night from 7 to 9 sharing material non-public information with each other. “This case describes a tight-knit circle of greed on the part of professionals willing to traffic in confidential information,” Bharara said when the charges were announced in January. “It was a circle of friends who essentially formed a criminal club, whose purpose was profit and whose members regularly bartered inside information.” In the beginning, when the club was first formed, there was a spirit of camaraderie, as the club members happily traded tips for everyone's mutual benefit. Unfortunately, things started to break down when some people agreed to cooperate with the government by recording their friends admitting wrongdoing, in exchange for leniency. Former Diamondback analyst Jesse Tortora, for instance, gave fellow club member Danny Kuo a call at the direction of the FBI on December 1, 2010, a conversation that Chiasson and Newman's lawyers are trying to use as evidence that Tortora, who will be testifying against them, lacks credibility, based on the fact that when asked by Kuo if his phone was being tapped, Tortora didn't say "Yup! Helping the Feds build a case against you, actually." “What’s happening, man?” Tortora asked during the call, according to a transcript prosecutors submitted to the court. “Dude, is your phone tapped?” Kuo replied. “Wait, is the phone tapped?” Tortora asked, adding, “Why do you ask that?” Despite losing major points for repeating the question-- you never repeat the question!-- and the extremely unconvincing "Oh, why do you ask" attempt to act natural and not like he was working for the government, Tortora ultimately recovered. After Kuo and Tortora discussed defense strategy to explain their trades were made after legitimate research, Kuo concluded the call with a final warning to Tortora about making future calls from a personal telephone, according to the transcript. “I would seriously invest in some quarters, and start calling from 7-Elevens,” Kuo said. Hedge Fund Founder Faces Jury as FBI Raids Yield Trial [Bloomberg]

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