Is it any wonder why people have lost their confidence in politicians? NPR reports on the latest abuse of public trust:
Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., was arrested Wednesday on charges related to insider trading.
A federal grand jury accused the Buffalo-area lawmaker of passing nonpublic information about a biotech company to his son, who traded on the information and passed it along to others.
“Congressman Collins cheated our markets and our justice system,” said Geoff Berman, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “He placed his family and friends above the public good.”
Collins was a director of and a major investor in a biotech company, which failed an important clinical trial in June. He immediately pass that information to his son Cameron, who passed the information to his fiancée’s dad.
That’s not legal, of course. Their inside information allowed them to avoid losses over $768,000.
Collins, his son Cameron, and the father of Cameron’s fiancée were all indicted on charges of securities and wire fraud, conspiracy, and lying to investigators.
That’ll put a damper on Thanksgiving dinner.
“The crime that he committed was to tip his son Cameron so that Cameron and a few select others could trade on the news while the investing public remained in the dark,” Berman said. And it’s exactly why Americans are tired of the D.C. elite getting special treatment because of their insider status.
Image Credit: By Yahoo [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Hat Tip: NPR