Indian-origin consultant charged in $450K insider trading scheme
Darpan News Desk IANS, 12 Nov, 2021 11:35 AM
An Indian-origin partner in a global consulting firm has been arrested and charged in an alleged insider trading scheme that netted him about $450,000, according to federal officials.
"Puneet Dikshit has been charged with serious felonies for his alleged conduct" of exploiting insider information about a pending acquisition, New York Federal Prosecutor Damian Williams said on Wednesday.
He was produced before Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox, who set a bail of $1 million.
According to a LinkedIn profile, he worked for McKinsey & Company, one of the largest global consulting firms.
Court papers said that Dikshit's company had been hired by Goldman Sachs to advise it on the acquisition of GreenSky, a company traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange, and that he had used insider information to trade options on that company's stocks.
After making some small trades, he bought call options - which are essentially bets on the stock prices going up - in accounts in his and his spouse's name for about $24,647 about two days before the Goldman Sach's announcement on September 15 that it was acquiring GreenSky in a $2.24 billion deal, according to court papers.
After the announcement when the stock prices shot up, he sold the call options at a profit of 1,829 per cent, netting about $450,000, court papers said.
"Dikshit now faces significant federal charges, which should serve as a warning to others considering similar conduct," said Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Dikshit, 40, is facing two separate charges, each of which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
Besides the criminal case filed by the prosecutor, he is facing a civil case launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking monetary penalties.
The lure of easy money from insider trading, using confidential information to manipulate stock prices or make a profit, has been the undoing of several leading figures in the US world, among them several people of Indian origin.
The most famous among them to get entangled in insider trading is Rajat Gupta, who was the first foreign-born person to head McKinsey.
He was sentenced to two years after being convicted of insider trading in 2012 and spent about a year and a half in prison and the rest of the term under house arrest.
Anil Kumar, a senior partner and director at McKinsey, who was involved in the same case turned approver and testified against Gupta. He was sentenced to two years of probation.
A 51-year-old man found guilty of killing his Indian-origin ex-wife while she was pregnant by firing a crossbow at her has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 33 years before parole in London on Friday.
Two Indian-origin brothers have pleaded guilty to participating in the activities of an organised crime group, which was involved in smuggling millions of pounds worth of illegal drugs into the UK via a series of front companies linked with the importation of chicken from the Netherlands.
Several people were stabbed on the London Bridge on Friday afternoon in a terror incident and the suspected attacker was shot dead by the police on the spot
In the high-profile extradition case of Jabir Motiwala, a top D-company aide, the Westminster Magistrates' Court here has sought details of terror linkages of Dawood Ibrahim with his aide.
The Pakistan Supreme Court on Thursday, in a short order, ruledthat Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa will remain the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) for another six months, during which the parliament will legislate on extension of an army chief's tenure.
A total of about 250 students, mostly from India, have been arrested in a sting operation by US immigration officials who set up a fake university in sting operation, according to media reports.
