Former Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Stanislav Shpigelman was sentenced to three years and a month in prison after pleading guilty to insider trading, which earned participants more than $6.7 million. Shpigelman was called the “critical component” in the scheme by US District Judge Kenneth M. Karas.
Karas says he ordered the prison term with a “heavy heart,” but being a case that investment circles would talk about for years the right message had to be sent, according to the Associated Press. “My actions were foolish and I regret considerably what I have done,” said Shpigelman before he was sentenced.
Eugene Plotkin, a Goldman Sachs associate in fixed income research, was also accused of trading ahead of announced deals by Merrill Lynch. Plotkin and David Pajcin, a former securities broker, were both accused of paying Shpigelman for information about six of Merrill Lynch’s pending mergers and acquisitions. They were also accused of bribing two employees at a printing plant that produced BusinessWeek so they could gain access to the “Inside Wall Street” column, which allowed them to trade favorable stock reviews ahead of time.