Ballplayer Called Out on Inside Trading

SAN DIEGO (CN) - Retired Major League third baseman Doug DeCinces will pay $2.5 million to settle inside stock trading charges, and three men he tipped off agreed to settle too, the SEC said.

Lead defendant DeCinces, of Laguna Beach, is accused of trading on inside information that Abbott Laboratories was about to announce a bid for Advanced Medical Optics.

DeCinces got the tip from the source at Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics, and "immediately began to purchase shares of Advanced Medical Optics in several brokerage accounts, buying more throughout the course of the impending transaction as he received updated information from his source," the SEC said in an announcing the settlements.

"During this time, DeCinces also illegally tipped three associates who traded on the confidential information - physical therapist Joseph J. Donohue, real estate lawyer Fred Scott Jackson, and businessman Roger A. Wittenbach.

"DeCinces agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle the SEC's charges, and the three others also agreed to settlements," the SEC said.

DeCinces, 60, had a .258 lifetime batting average in a 15-year career with the Orioles and Angels.

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