White-collar ring cracked

NEW YORK — Prosecutors have broken up what they call one of the biggest Wall Street insider-trading rings since the 1980s — a sweeping, $15 million scandal that involved lawyers and power brokers at some of the nation's top financial firms.

In announcing the case Thursday, authorities described a criminal operation that used insiders at Morgan Stanley and UBS Securities to steal valuable secrets from the companies. Prosecutors also alleged a Banc of America Securities broker accepted cash kickbacks and two former representatives of Bear Stearns obtained UBS inside information.

"This conduct didn't occur in obscure boiler rooms — but rather at what are commonly considered 'top tier' Wall Street firms," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the Division of Enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission. "There is hardly a duty on Wall Street that the defendants charged [Thursday] didn't breach."

The defendants included husband-and-wife lawyers, registered representatives, compliance personnel and hedge-fund portfolio managers who improperly relied on hundreds of tips during five years of illegal trading, she said.

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said Wall Street professionals repeatedly traded on secrets revealed to them by insiders at UBS and Morgan Stanley.

The case alleges that people were tipped off about stock upgrades and downgrades allowing investors to cash in before the news hit the market.

The SEC said the ringleaders of the UBS part of the scheme went to great lengths to hide their illegal conduct, with tactics including a clandestine meeting at Manhattan's famed Oyster Bar and eventually the use of disposable cellphones, secret codes and cash kickbacks.

In all, 13 people have been arrested in the criminal case. The SEC brought civil charges against 11 individuals and three entities.

Among financial professionals charged criminally in U.S. District Court in Manhattan was Mitchel Guttenberg, an executive director and institutional client manager at UBS.

Garcia said Guttenberg, who worked in UBS's equity-research department, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars as he sold nonpublic information to two men regarding upcoming upgrades and downgrades by UBS analysts.

The men, David Tavdy and Erik Franklin, used the UBS inside information to each earn more than $4 million by executing profitable trades in various brokerage accounts they controlled, Garcia said.

Guttenberg pleaded not guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday and was released on $500,000 bail. He declined to comment afterward.

The husband-and-wife attorneys, Randi Collotta, 30, a former employee of Morgan Stanley, and her husband, Christopher Collotta, 34, who worked in private practice, were also among those criminally charged.

In an indictment, prosecutors said Randi Collotta was an associate in Morgan Stanley's global-compliance division when she passed inside stock tips to her husband, who gave them to others, resulting in illegal profits of hundreds of thousands of dollars between September 2004 and August 2005. After others made money from the tips, they paid Christopher Collotta.

Guttenberg, Tavdy, Franklin and the Collottas were charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud, which carry potential penalties of up to 25 years in prison.

Four additional criminal defendants have pleaded guilty to conspiracy, securities fraud and commercial bribery charges, prosecutors said.

Thomsen said it was "one of the most pervasive Wall Street insider trading rings" since Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine carried out their notorious insider-trading schemes in the 1980s.

Mary Claire Delaney, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, said, "We have cooperated and are continuing to cooperate fully with authorities regarding a former employee who allegedly stole information from Morgan Stanley."

Thomsen said original tippers in both insider schemes, Guttenberg and Randi Collotta, took steps to evade detection including not trading in their personal accounts and accepting kickbacks in cash.

"Some defendants may have thought they were flying 'under the radar' by making modest profits on individual transactions, secure in the knowledge that, over hundreds of tips, they would reap millions of dollars in illicit trading profits," she said.

"And yet, despite their best efforts to avoid detection, we caught them."