Martoma’s insider-trading conviction upheld
The insider trading conviction of former SAC Capital portfolio manager Mathew Martoma was upheld Thursday by a federal judge.
Dealing a legal setback to the former financial lieutenant for billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe ruled that “the evidence at trial overwhelmingly demonstrated Martoma’s guilt” in what prosecutors called history’s most profitable insider-trading scam.
Martoma was convicted in February on charges of conspiracy and securities fraud.
The case focused on evidence that Martoma illegally obtained disappointing results of clinical tests on an experimental Alzheimer’s disease drug where got the information by cultivating friendships with two doctors who had access to some of the drug trial data and shared it with him.
“Mr. Martoma is not perfect, but he is a good man,” defense attorney Richard Strassberg wrote in a May sentencing memo in which he noted that others recently convicted on insider trading charges received relatively short prison sentences.
“To prevent a sentence disparity, to recognize his lower level of culpability relative to other insider trading cases … we respectfully request leniency in his sentence,” wrote Strassberg.
Source: Usatoday
