The co-founder and a former portfolio manager of Greenwich hedge fund Level Global Investors was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his role in an insider trading scheme.
Anthony Chiasson, who was convicted last December of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and five counts of securities fraud, learned his fate earlier this week in Manhattan federal court. He was also sentenced to one year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $5 million fine.
According to court documents, Level Global made nearly $70 million in profits from a series of trades that were executed in 2008 and 2009 using non-public information about Dell Inc. and Nvidia Corp. that was obtained by Chiasson.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Chiasson “chose to be part of a corrupt circle of friends that cheated the market to gain an unfair trading advantage, and for that, he lost his career, his reputation and now he has lost his liberty.”
Prosecutors say that circle of friends included Todd Newman, a co-defendant along with Chiasson who was also convicted of securities fraud Dec. 17, 2012. Newman, a former portfolio manager of Diamondback Capital Management in Stamford, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and four counts of securities fraud. He was sentenced earlier this month to four and a half years in prison.
Prosecutors say others were involved in the scheme, including Chiasson’s research analyst, Sam Adondakis, and Sandy Goyal, Jon Horvath, Danny Kuo and Jesse Tortora – all analysts employed by other firms.
Adondakis, Tortura and Goyal each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of securities fraud in 2011, while Horvath and Kuo each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of securities fraud last year. All five await sentencing.
