Federal prosecutors had alleged that Mark Anthony Longoria, a former Advanced Micro Devices Inc. supply-chain manager, and Walter Shimoon, a former executive at a unit of Flextronics International Inc., provided inside information to clients of California expert-network firm Primary Global Research. The men were each secretly paid as consultants by clients of the firm, receiving hundreds of dollars per each call, prosecutors claimed….
In ordering no time in prison for either defendant, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff said insider-trading convictions almost always are made because of cooperating witnesses. “It’s not because this court does not think their crimes were serious,” the judge said. “It is because the very nature of this crime and the very nature of its discovery is very dependent on cooperators.”
via Two Cooperating Witnesses Avoid Prison in Insider Probe – WSJ
