A bid for acquittal and fresh trial filed by an Indian-origin portfolio manager, convicted for his role in the most lucrative insider trading scheme in US history, has been denied by a court which ruled that evidence in the case "overwhelmingly" showed that he is guilty.
Mathew Martoma, 39, will be sentenced on the scheduled date of September 8 after US District Judge Paul Gardephe denied his motion for a judgement of acquittal and alternatively for a new trial.
Martoma was convicted in February for his role as the "central figure" in one of the most lucrative insider trading schemes in US history.
US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara has said in court papers that Martoma should be handed down a "significant period of imprisonment" that is more than the eight years recommended by the probation department.
Bharara has also asked the court to order Martoma to forfeit his 2008 bonus totalling USD 9.4 million and pay a separate fine to reflect the "serious offense" committed by him.
In rejecting Martoma's motion to throw out his insider trading conviction, Gardephe said Martoma offered no persuasive argument in the trial against the "overwhelming circumstantial evidence" demonstrating that he traded on the securities of pharma companies Elan and Wyeth for his hedge fund SAC Capital after receiving confidential information from two doctors about an Alzheimer's disease drug trial.
The judge said that Martoma and SAC Capital were able to make profits and avoid losses totalling USD 275 million because of the inside information he had "wrongfuly" obtained from the two doctors, while countless other investors who were were not privy to this information had to "bear the full brunt" of the decline in stock prices of Elan and Wyeth.
"The assertion that there are no victims of Martoma's crimes is as astounding as it is meritless," the judge said.
The judge ruled that evidence at trial was sufficient to demonstrate that Martoma knew that he had received material, non-public information from the two doctors in violation of their duties to Elan and Wyeth.
The judge also rejected Martoma's assertion that he should be granted a new trial because the jury had become biased against him after it was revealed during the case that he had been expelled from Harvard in 1999 for allegedly doctoring his law school transcript to try to gain a federal clerkship.
