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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Former IBM Exec Gets 6-Month Sentence

MANHATTAN (CN) - A former senior executive at IBM was sentenced on Monday to 6 months in prison for his role in what prosecutors call the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history. Robert Moffat, a former senior vice president of IBM, is one of 12 defendants to plead guilty. In March he admitted that he had leaked information about IBM's possible merger with Sun Microsystems to Danielle Chiesi, a consultant for New Castle Funds.

Moffat's sentence is another step in the first investigation in which federal agents acknowledged using wiretaps to investigate insider trading on Wall Street.

Wiretap transcripts showed that participants knew their activities were illegal, and Chiesi expressed fear of being caught.

"You put me in jail if you talk," she said in one conversation, according to the transcripts. "I'm dead if this leaks. I really am ... and my career is over. I'll be like Martha fucking Stewart."

Chiesi, along with Sri Lankan billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, are scheduled for trial in 2011.

"White-collar crime is just as destructive to our social fabric as the crimes of drugs and violence," Judge Deborah Batts said handing down the sentence. She ordered Moffat, 54, of Ridgefield, Conn., to start his prison term at the end of June 2011 and pay a $50,000 fine.

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