Criminal Law Keyed to Hoffmann
Carpenter v. United States
Facts
R. Foster Winans, Kenneth Felis, and David Carpenter participated in a plotto take advantage of the stock market by using confidential information. Winans was aWall Street Journal writer who wrote daily columnsabout certain stocks to provided readers of the Journal an insight for future investments. Often times, the information published in the column effected the value of the specific stock. Pursuant to the Journal’s policy, prior to the writer’s publication, the information found in the column was deemed to be confidential information. Nevertheless, even when knowing the Journal’s policy, Winan made an agreement with Felis and Peter Brant, both whom were stock brokers at Kidder Peabody, which stated that Winans would write information, such as dates of several columns to give Felis and Brant a trade advantageprior to publication. During a four-month period, the agreement made comprised of a profit of approximately $690,000. Thereafter, Kidder Peabody and the Journal grew suspicious of the correlation between the columns and the net profit in trades, causing them to discover the agreement between Winan, Felis, and Peter Brant.Subsequently, Winans and Carpenter, Winans’s roommate, approached the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose the agreement. Both, Winans and Felis, were charged and convicted of violating the mail and wire-fraud statutes and other securities statutes. Specifically, Carpenter was charged and convicted of aiding and abetting. Subsequently, Winans and Felis appealed their convictions alleging their conduct was not a plot to defraud, as defined within the statutes, and the record does not contain evidence that any money or property was take from the Journal, a requisite element for the conviction.
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