NEW YORK: Former Nuveen LLC trader Lawrence Billimek should spend almost six years behind bars for front-running the firm’s trades as part of a US$47mil insider trading scheme, US prosecutors have told a federal judge.
The government urged US District Judge Paul Gardephe to order a 70-month prison term for Billimek when he’s sentenced May 20 in New York, and added in a court filing on Monday that the punishment would be sufficient to discourage the ex-trader and others from committing similar crimes.
Billimek, 53, pleaded guilty in November to passing tips about planned Nuveen stock purchases over a six-year period to retiree Alan Williams, who would then acquire the shares ahead of the asset management giant.
Williams pleaded guilty two months before Billimek and is also scheduled to be sentenced.
The case was one of the first in which the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Consolidated Audit Trail – a controversial database tracking almost all US market activity – was credited with catching insider traders.
Lawyers for Billimek last week asked Gardephe for the “most lenient sentence,” arguing the ex-trader had suffered enough by losing his career and reputation.
But prosecutors on Monday asked the judge for prison time, and added that he “abused his employer’s trust to carry out a multiyear insider trading scheme that reaped tens of millions of dollars of profit that funded his lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of multiple homes.”
“Along the way, he deceived his employer, family and multiple financial institutions,” prosecutors said.
“And it most certainly did not have to be this way. The defendant had a steady career and every opportunity to lead a law-abiding life. — Bloomberg
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