Whitman Capital founder Doug Whitman gets 2 years for insider trades
My trial and my conviction have served as a rude and bitter wakeup call."
Whitman was also fined $250,000 and sentenced to one year of supervised release. He was granted bail pending an expected appeal. Federal prosecutor Chris LaVigne said the government will seek a forfeiture of $935,306 of illegal profit.
"Doug Whitman maintains his innocence and looks forward to vindication on appeal," his lawyer David Anderson said in a statement.
Whitman had sought a maximum prison term of six months.
Another of his lawyers, David Rody, told Rakoff that a long sentence was not needed for deterrence, and that prosecuting a "relatively smaller player" such as Whitman was enough to convince others in the hedge fund industry that "nobody's safe."
US Attorney Preet Bharara in New York has obtained well over than 60 guilty pleas and verdicts since publicly revealing his insider trading probe in late 2009.
MULTIPLE INSIDERS
Prosecutors said Whitman tried to make illegal profit with the help of insiders such as Roomy Khan, a former Intel Corp employee who passed tips on Google and Polycom, and Karl Motey, a consultant who passed tips about Marvell.
Also testifying against Whitman was Wesley Wang, a former Whitman Capital employee who later worked at Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors LP.
Khan, Motey and Wang have pleaded guilty to various crimes linked to insider trading. They have been cooperating with investigators with the hope of receiving lighter sentences.
As in many other recent insider trading prosecutions, the government's evidence against Whitman included telephone conversations secretly recorded by the
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