A former Republican congressman from Indiana was ordered to spend 22 months in prison for trading on inside information about mergers he learned about while working as a consultant after leaving office.
(Bloomberg) — A former Republican congressman from Indiana was ordered to spend 22 months in prison for trading on inside information about mergers he learned about while working as a consultant after leaving office.
Stephen Buyer, who served in Congress from 1993 to 2011, was sentenced Tuesday by US District Judge Richard Berman in New York. Buyer was found guilty in March of making nearly $350,000 insider trading ahead of T-Mobile US Inc.’s 2018 announcement of plans to acquire Sprint Corp. and Guidehouse Inc.’s 2019 acquisition of Navigant Consulting Inc.
Berman ordered Buyer to report to prison on Nov. 28.
At the hearing, Buyer declined to address his conviction, saying he would appeal. He told the judge his life was characterized by “good acts.”
While in Congress, Buyer served on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, which oversees the telecommunications industry. After leaving politics in 2011, he formed a consulting firm advising companies in that and other sectors.
Prosecutors said Buyer learned of the Sprint deal while playing golf with a government affairs executive at T-Mobile in Miami and the Navigant deal through a conversation with a Guidehouse salesperson.
Buyer, who testified in his own defense, said that he never traded on confidential information that wasn’t available to the public.
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