Three former securities traders were convicted on Monday on all counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit insider trading on pending mergers, in another victory for prosecutors in their probe of suspicious trading on Wall Street. Brothers Zvi Goffer and Emanuel Goffer and a third trader, Michael Kimelman, their former partner at trading firm Incremental Capital LLC, chose to go to trial when dozens of other insider trading defendants in the broad probe have pleaded guilty.
The case is part of a wide-ranging insider trading investigation focused on hedge funds and traders, a probe marked by the use of FBI wiretaps. The central defendant in the government's probe is Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, who was convicted last month of insider-related charges, also in Manhattan federal court. The convictions carry a maximum possible prison sentence of 25 years for each man. On May 11, another jury in the same courthouse convicted Rajaratnam, 53. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29.