Ex-lawmaker convicted of insider trading before T-Mobile merger
Former US Congressman Stephen Buyer was found guilty by a New York jury on Friday of trading inside information he learned in 2018 as a consultant to T-Mobile US Inc. before its 23-year merger. billion dollars with Sprint.
Buyer was a Republican from Indiana in the United States House of Representatives between 1993 and 2011 before working as a business consultant.
Prosecutors said in a trial that began March 1 that the buyer bought shares of Sprint after learning from a T-Mobile executive that the telecommunications companies were in merger talks in 2018 and engaged in another insider trading scheme in 2019.
The buyer testified at trial and denied exchanging inside information. His attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
The former congressman was found guilty of four counts of securities fraud. Judge Richard Berman will hold a sentencing hearing on July 11.
The buyer made more than $100,000 from Sprint transactions and more than $200,000 from shares in Navigant Consulting Inc., which he bought before Guidehouse acquired the company in 2019, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors urged the jury to focus on the timing of the buyer’s transactions, which took place when employees of its client companies learned of the mergers.
The buyer’s attorneys argued that no hard evidence was presented when it learned of the two mergers and said it relied on public research to pick the stocks.
The former congressman was one of many people, including a former Goldman Sachs banker, arrested on insider trading charges in July in a crackdown led by Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.