Speaker 1: A year long investigation into the under the radar information
Speaker 1: links between Washington and Wall Street has led to insider
Speaker 1: trading charges aimed at the political intelligence industry and healthcare companies.
Speaker 1: Manhattan federal prosecutors and federal regulators have charged a DC consultant,
Speaker 1: a government employee, and three hedge fund executives at Deerfield
Speaker 1: Management with profiting from confidential information about pending decisions by
Speaker 1: the centers from Medicare and Medicaid services. They alleged the
Speaker 1: scheme generated from three point five to three point nine
Speaker 1: million dollars in illegal profits. My guests are Eugene Saltist,
Speaker 1: professor at the Harvard Business School and author of Why
Speaker 1: They Do It Inside the Mind of the White Collar Criminal,
Speaker 1: and Robert Hocket, professor at Cornell University Law School. Bob
Speaker 1: start us off by telling us about the case. Sure, So,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, it's not a classic insider trading case.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's also an instance of what
Speaker 1: appears to be a new trend in inCider trading. So
Speaker 1: it's classic in the sense that you've got somebody who's
Speaker 1: an insider or to a particular agency that is going
Speaker 1: to make decisions that are going to have an effect
Speaker 1: on the price or the value of certain firms, and
Speaker 1: thus on the prices of those firms securities. That insider
Speaker 1: then reveals some of the inside information that he has
Speaker 1: before it becomes public, in this case about two months
Speaker 1: before it becomes public. Those to whom he reveals it,
Speaker 1: of course trade on the securities in question, because they
Speaker 1: have an informational advantage relative to other traders out there,
Speaker 1: and then of course they plott rather nice handsome gains,
Speaker 1: as you said, between three point five and three point
Speaker 1: nine million dollars. That's the center, which is classical. The
Speaker 1: one sense that in which it represents an instance of
Speaker 1: a new kind of or a new variant of insider
Speaker 1: trading is that there seems to be an increasing reliance
Speaker 1: now on the part of insider traders on consultants who
Speaker 1: used to be employed by the particular agencies, um, whose
Speaker 1: decisions they're sort of getting access to in advance. Um.
Speaker 1: The thought seems to be that using these consult will
Speaker 1: sort of insulate the insider traders. As we're finding now
Speaker 1: it's not actually going to insulate them at all. Um.
Speaker 1: They're going to be found just as well. They seem
Speaker 1: just as likely to be discovered uh and uh and
Speaker 1: uh prosecuted as they would have been if they had
Speaker 1: used the old fashioned way of simply relying on friends. Eugene,
Speaker 1: is there a fine line to cross between so called
Speaker 1: political intelligence and insider trading? Yes, I certainly think there is.
Speaker 1: I mean, what you see the individuals in this case
Speaker 1: doing and very much by many of their emails, looks
Speaker 1: and kind of feels like research. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: pretty open about their conversations and trying to understand the
Speaker 1: dates and the size, the changes in payments, uh, the
Speaker 1: kinds of things that people and analysts are trying to
Speaker 1: get to better understand how what's going to happen to
Speaker 1: affirm in the future. And so if if these hedge
Speaker 1: fund analysts actually approached a CEO or an investor relations
Speaker 1: officer and found this out from an executive, so supposed
Speaker 1: the CEO said, you know, I'm really worried about the
Speaker 1: reimbursement rates over the next year. We think medicaid might
Speaker 1: actually change those. Uh. That would actually be a fair
Speaker 1: game under our current system of rules. Um, what could
Speaker 1: happen is could be a regulate de violation from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of the firm if it was considered material, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't lead to an insider training charge for the
Speaker 1: individuals that are receiving the information. But we see in
Speaker 1: this case, the fact that they actually acquired this information
Speaker 1: via someone in the government actually led to a you know,
Speaker 1: a much more serious charge for for everyone involved. Bob,
Speaker 1: what do you agree to because what struck me here
Speaker 1: is that the the insider was a former friend and
Speaker 1: had worked with a consultant and didn't seem to really
Speaker 1: profit from this. Um. Yeah, it's it's not clear at
Speaker 1: this point whether the actual the the person who was
Speaker 1: still within the agency was profiting or not. We do know, however,
Speaker 1: that the so called consultants who used to work in
Speaker 1: the agency and was still quite close friends apparently with
Speaker 1: Mr Laurel who was still within the agency at the time,
Speaker 1: UH did profit and um Eugene and I also wonder
Speaker 1: about if a lot of this is has to do
Speaker 1: with the emails, and I always wonder why are people
Speaker 1: still writing these emails because some of the things in
Speaker 1: the emails um Uh. The consultant bragged about his access
Speaker 1: to inside information. He wrote his predictions differed from those
Speaker 1: of a competitor who doesn't know anyone at CMS. His
Speaker 1: guesses are just wild, random guesses that obviously doesn't look
Speaker 1: good with emails, and I think that makes the case,
Speaker 1: helps make the case that the prosecutors will will ultimately
Speaker 1: seek to make in the case. But if one actually
Speaker 1: thinks about looks at reports, for example, written by south
Speaker 1: Side analysts, um they they kind of not in that
Speaker 1: kind of explicit way, but they bragged that yesterday I
Speaker 1: just had a conference call, I just had a private
Speaker 1: meeting with the CEO and CFO over the firm, and
Speaker 1: that helped me better understand what's going to happen. And
Speaker 1: now you should believe my report more than the other
Speaker 1: south Side analysts who you might be reading from. So
Speaker 1: that I think the type in the language obviously is
Speaker 1: one that is certainly not going to serve anyone well
Speaker 1: in this case. But the underlying sentiment that you know
Speaker 1: you have better knowledge than someone else that's still coming
Speaker 1: within the market. We're talking about Manhattan federal prosecutors and
Speaker 1: federal regulators charging a DC consultant, a government employee, and
Speaker 1: three hedge fund executives at Deerfield Management with profiting from
Speaker 1: confidential information about pending decisions. By the Centers for Medicare
Speaker 1: and Medicaid Services. And we're talking with Robert Hockett, professor
Speaker 1: at Cornell University Law School, and Eugene Soltists, professor at
Speaker 1: the Harvard Business School and author of Why They Do
Speaker 1: It Inside the Mind of the White Color Criminal, Bob
Speaker 1: what One of the um what charges states is that
Speaker 1: just like trading on material non public corporate information can
Speaker 1: be a federal crime, so can trading based on secret
Speaker 1: government information as alleged as alleged as happened here. But
Speaker 1: our prosecutors expanding their focus by going to these consultants,
Speaker 1: I don't well, I mean, I don't think if they're
Speaker 1: spending the focus as much as they're just responding to
Speaker 1: changes in the methodologies that are used by insider traders. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is sort of an interesting phenomenon, right. It's
Speaker 1: it's well known. It's long been established that people who
Speaker 1: have formerly worked in government become consultants partly because they
Speaker 1: are able to provide access to personnel, to actual policy
Speaker 1: makers and decision makers, to those who are interested in
Speaker 1: the outcomes of these sorts of decisions. What's sort of
Speaker 1: new is they're providing access to what is indeed material
Speaker 1: non public information of the kind that it's illegal to
Speaker 1: trade upon. This seems to be something of new development,
Speaker 1: and that's, of course what's happening here. Um, and I
Speaker 1: think that the government is simply responding to it. Both
Speaker 1: the SEC and the Justice Department. Are, you know, basically
Speaker 1: keeping up with the times, so to speak, as new
Speaker 1: methods of conducting insider trading emerge? Uh so do so
Speaker 1: does the focus of a particular prosecutor or regulator shift
Speaker 1: in order to sort of again respond to that change.
Speaker 1: Eugene attorneys for Robert Ollen and Theodore huber And said
Speaker 1: that their clients did nothing wrong and a turn, we
Speaker 1: have not been able to get in touch or they
Speaker 1: haven't responded yet to the attorneys for the government employee
Speaker 1: in the DC consultant. But one of the former Deerfield executives,
Speaker 1: Jordan Fogel, pleaded guilty on Friday and is cooperating with prosecutors. Um.
Speaker 1: Does that tell you that it's going to be an
Speaker 1: uphill battle for the defense. I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence. I mean, the SEC complaint is over
Speaker 1: fifty pages, so they've put together a pretty sensive case,
Speaker 1: especially with the with the emails, UM, especially some of
Speaker 1: the more colorful emails. But I think the position, you know,
Speaker 1: their clients are and they're thinking. I think at the
Speaker 1: time they view themselves as doing research, and I think
Speaker 1: this is this murky world in which, you know, acquiring
Speaker 1: some types of information, uh is acceptable and some types
Speaker 1: are not. And actually what is deemed material is itself
Speaker 1: quite fuzzy. I mean it's defined right now. Is something
Speaker 1: that a reasonable investor would find useful for more making
Speaker 1: a more informed training decision. Um. On one hand, you
Speaker 1: could say that covers basically anything, so there's really nothing
Speaker 1: you can learn from talking to an executive or someone
Speaker 1: in the government position. But at the same time, every
Speaker 1: day there's you know, thousands of these meetings going on
Speaker 1: all the time. So people believe they can legitimately acquire
Speaker 1: some kinds of information. The question is what types of
Speaker 1: information is actually acceptable and unacceptable. Bob I return again
Speaker 1: to the inside government employee world. He's charged with sixteen
Speaker 1: counts and could face two years in prison. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's a number that will never be reached, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those numbers they put out there that
Speaker 1: seems to be a lot for someone who was you know,
Speaker 1: friends with the guy, had worked with him, and didn't cash,
Speaker 1: didn't change hands. Yeah. I think there are a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons though that that make him a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons that he looks um I think especially worth going
Speaker 1: after to the government. The main one is actually one
Speaker 1: of those colorful emails mentioned a moment ago, um so
Speaker 1: when he was first first approached by Mr Mr Blass,
Speaker 1: who had previously worked with him in the agency and
Speaker 1: now you know with the consultancy for him. Um. You
Speaker 1: know this his his friend uh promised him apparently the
Speaker 1: prospect of making up to two million dollars in revenue
Speaker 1: by revealing this information. Uh. And Mr Worrell apparently responded
Speaker 1: by saying, you're like a drunk and then put in
Speaker 1: square brackets prostitute. To me, it's hard to resist l
Speaker 1: O L let's talk. So it's it's just fairly incriminate.
Speaker 1: Think looking email, it makes his motives looks quite criminal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so my guess is that that's really the that's
Speaker 1: the key here. It doesn't really matter whether he got
Speaker 1: the money or not. The fact that he was acting
Speaker 1: on the promise of that kind of money and was
Speaker 1: knowingly do something doing something that he's prohibited from doing.
Speaker 1: I think that suffices as far as the regulators and
Speaker 1: the prosecutors are concerned. Eugene. Whenever we discuss insider trading,
Speaker 1: we always ask it is the conduct actually harmful to
Speaker 1: the market, and if so, how how about this conduct
Speaker 1: that's good at least my view a little bit more interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, we generally here from prosecutors. That's the reason
Speaker 1: why insider trading is harmful is because it's people are
Speaker 1: trading in the market on information others don't have. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's lots of opportunities in the market for people
Speaker 1: it hedge funds and other other places to have information
Speaker 1: that I and others don't have. So that's really why
Speaker 1: it's harmful. It's it's harmful because it's it's misappropriating information.
Speaker 1: It's it's steal information. And so in like a more
Speaker 1: classical insider trading case in which someone knows about an
Speaker 1: upcoming acquisition a company it makes and then starts tells
Speaker 1: their friends and they start buying shares, this runs up
Speaker 1: the price, potentially making that acquisition no longer feasible. So
Speaker 1: it actually harms the person, harms the entity or the
Speaker 1: firm that actually possesses this information. Now what's interesting here
Speaker 1: is that it's it's not really the misappropriation of the information,
Speaker 1: which is essentially government information, isn't necessarily causing i'll say
Speaker 1: harm to the government. I did my PhD Chicago and
Speaker 1: kinds of school of market efficiency. I mean, one can
Speaker 1: actually argue that the incorporating this information to prices actually
Speaker 1: making markets more efficient, um in that regard um, and
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily hurting the person that possesses it, the government.
Speaker 1: So it's I think it's a little bit different in
Speaker 1: that regard um. You know, ultimately we can be concerned
Speaker 1: about the integrities marketing if everyone is trading on information
Speaker 1: that acquires through these different sorts, going to have to
Speaker 1: stop you right there will be discussing this again in
Speaker 1: the future. I hope both of you will come back.
Speaker 1: That's Eugene Saltis, professor at the Harvard Business School and
Speaker 1: Robert Hockett, professor at Cornell University Law School. Coming up.
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