Gibsonia Man Faces Charges For Insider Trading
Most of the time, cheating goes unpunished. When children complain to parents and teachers that other kids are cheating at playground games, the most sympathetic response they can expect to get is, “It’s only a game.” Sometimes, it seems like the adults are more annoyed by the kids who complain than the kids who cheat. It is as if the lesson at hand is, “No one likes a tattle tale.” Nowhere is life’s unfairness more on display than on the stock market. The cheaters and the folks who have no qualms about stepping on people to get to the top own publicly traded companies, while the rest of us buy a few shares of stock with our hard-earned cash and have nothing to show for it except a good mood when our modest amount of money turns into a slightly larger modest amount of money. Of course, if you treat stock market investing like a full-time job, by carefully studying the markets and risking a nontrivial portion of your employment income, it is possible to profit from it the way you would from a full-time job. Therefore, laws against insider trading aim to prevent unfair stock market trades that prevent the public from having access to the stock market income that, in theory, should be available to everyone. If you are being accused of insider trading, contact a Pittsburgh white collar crime lawyer.
What Is Insider Trading?
Purchases and sales of shares of stock on the stock exchange are supposed to be based on information in the public domain, such as the quarterly reports published by publicly traded companies about their profits and losses, and news reports about corporate mergers and business bankruptcy filings. It stands to reason that employees know more about their own companies’ performance than the public knows. A cashier at a branch of a national retail chain probably does not have inside information, but the company’s Chief Financial Officer does. The legal definition of inside information is material, non-public information; material in this case means important enough to affect one’s stock market investing decisions. Of course, it is perfectly legal to buy stock in a company with which you are employed. You must, however, file forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission if you are party to inside information and you make a trade based on this inside information before it is released to the public.
In the News
Frank Poerio of Gibsonia is facing charges for four counts of securities fraud after allegedly using inside information to inform his trades of shares in Dick’s Sporting Goods stock. He allegedly asked an acquaintance who worked at Dick’s corporate office about the company’s performance, and the employee claims that he gave vague answers and urged Poerio not to make trades during the company’s “blackout periods” when employees were forbidden to trade the company’s stock shortly before the publication of reports. If convicted, Poerio, 62, could receive a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Contact Gary E. Gerson About Criminal Defense Cases
A criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing criminal charges for insider trading. Contact the law offices of Gary E. Gerson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania about your case.
