Former US congressman Stephen Buyer was convicted by a New York jury on Friday of trading inside information he obtained in 2018 as a consultant to T-Mobile US Inc. before its $23 billion merger with Sprint.
Buyer was a Republican from Indiana in the US House of Representatives from 1993-2011 before working as a corporate consultant.
Prosecutors said in a trial that began March 1 that Buyer bought Sprint stock after learning from a T-Mobile executive that the telecommunications companies were in merger talks in 2018 and engaged in another insider trading scheme. in 2019.
The buyer took the stand at trial and denied trading inside information. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The former congressman was found guilty of four counts of securities fraud. Judge Richard Berman will hold a sentencing hearing on July 11.
The buyer made more than $100,000 from the Sprint transactions and more than $200,000 from shares in Navigant Consulting Inc., which it bought before Guidehouse acquired the company in 2019, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors urged the jury to focus on the timing of Buyer’s transactions, which occurred when employees of his client companies learned of the mergers.
Lawyers for the buyer argued that no hard evidence was produced when it learned of the two mergers, saying it had relied on public inquiry in choosing shares.
The former congressman was one of several people, including a former Goldman Sachs banker, arrested on insider trading charges in July as part of a crackdown by Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.