Former Apple securities lawyer pleads guilty to insider trading charges
Gene Levoff, former senior director of corporate law for Apple, has pleaded guilty to six counts of security fraud -- the same type of fraud he was hired to prevent.
Gene Levoff
In 2019, Levoff was accused of arranging and executing a five-year insider trading scheme, where he allegedly used internal financial information to perform trades before they were publicly reported.
In 2020, he fought against the inditement, citing that the prosecution was unconstitutional. The court struck down the motion.
Now, Levoff has pleaded guilty to six counts of securities fraud, according to the Department of Justice, as spotted by The Verge.
Levoff was meant to be in charge of enforcing a blackout period that would prevent people with such knowledge from buying or selling stock ahead of disclosure, but instead, he allegedly benefited by securing profits worth approximately $227,000 and avoided losses of $377,000.
Levoff's sentencing is scheduled for November 10. He could face a maximum penalty of up to 120 years in prison and up to $30 million in fines.
Read on AppleInsider
Gene Levoff
In 2019, Levoff was accused of arranging and executing a five-year insider trading scheme, where he allegedly used internal financial information to perform trades before they were publicly reported.
In 2020, he fought against the inditement, citing that the prosecution was unconstitutional. The court struck down the motion.
Now, Levoff has pleaded guilty to six counts of securities fraud, according to the Department of Justice, as spotted by The Verge.
Levoff was meant to be in charge of enforcing a blackout period that would prevent people with such knowledge from buying or selling stock ahead of disclosure, but instead, he allegedly benefited by securing profits worth approximately $227,000 and avoided losses of $377,000.
Levoff's sentencing is scheduled for November 10. He could face a maximum penalty of up to 120 years in prison and up to $30 million in fines.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Also, a penalty of $30,000,000 for a crime of $604,000 works out to $49.67 in penalties for every dollar robbed.
and that's why the punishment must be paradigmatical
The reason why the "max" is so high is because insider trading is insider trading, regardless of the amount of money involve. A person netting $.5M from insider trading faces the same max sentences, as one that netted $5M or $500M. Plus the forfeit of their netted profit.
It's doubtful that the sentencing judge will impose the max fine and sentence in this case. Even if given the max, the fine can be $30M, but the prison time can be serve consecutively concurrently and thus only 20 years.
That is a valid question without defending his actions.
Revenge-seeking people who don't see anything wrong with insane punishments like this are more scary than the perpetrators of these crimes. Reforming people in a few short months or years so they can become productive in society again should be the goal, not locking someone away forever at taxpayer's expense.
What should happen is they should be sentenced to some sort of half-way house type place or monitored existence and required to work a job that will pay for their half-way house existence as well as provide money to provide restitution as well as cover any fines. They should be expected to pay their own expenses, fines, and restitution for the longer of either the set sentence or until they have paid everything. (Ie if the sentence is 20 years they live this was for 20 years but if the amount is not yet paid they stay longer, but if they pay it in 10 they have to stay the 20).
Non violent, non dangerous criminals shouldn't become literal wards of the state which has to provide for their existence. They should be punished in a way that doesn't out a financial burden on the state and which allows them to actually provide for themselves and for restitution. Still harsh compared to normal life.