Former law firm partner Walter C. Little, also known as ‘Chet,’ was sentenced to 27 months in prison for conspiring to commit insider trading, announced U.S. Attorney Geoffrey H. Berman for the Southern District of New York on February 15, 2018.
LITTLE, 44, began working for the Firm as an associate in 2005 and eventually became a partner. The Firm provided legal services in connection with financial transactions and regulatory issues to a wide variety of clients, who entrusted the Firm with nonpublic information when using its services.
Contrary to Firm policies requiring that this information be kept secret and be used only for business purposes, LITTLE improperly accessed sensitive information on the Firm’s servers and used it to make profitable securities trades. He viewed numerous documents that contained material nonpublic information about, among other things, an anticipated delisting from the NASDAQ stock exchange, unannounced mergers and acquisitions, anticipated earnings releases, and a planned securities offering.
Between February 2015 and May 2016, LITTLE made hundreds of thousands of dollars trading stocks and options based on the information contained in these documents. In addition to trading on the information himself, LITTLE also provided the information to Andrew Berke, his business associate and friend, who also traded on it and made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal gains as well.
In addition to the prison sentence, LITTLE was sentenced to three years of supervised release. The Court further ordered LITTLE to forfeit a sum of $452,998.
Mr. Berman praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and thanked the Securities and Exchange Commission for its assistance.
This case is being handled by the Office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. Assistant United States Attorneys Robert Allen and Samson Enzer are in charge of the prosecution.
LITTLE pled guilty on November 9, 2017, before U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla, who also imposed today’s sentence.
Key Facts
- State: New York
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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