Ex-Moelis Banker to Plead Guilty in Global Insider Trading Case
(Bloomberg) — A former Moelis & Co. investment banker plans to return to the US from France to plead guilty to tipping off members of a global insider-trading ring.
Benjamin Taylor was charged in an indictment unsealed in 2019 that alleged he passed tips on deals to a ring that operated in the US, UK, France, Switzerland, Greece, Israel and Hong Kong. Several other people, including an ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker, were convicted in the case.
Taylor has been living in France, which doesn’t extradite its citizens. But his lawyer, Celeste Koeleveld, said Friday in a letter to a New York federal judge that Taylor wished to “put the past behind him and accept responsibility for his conduct.”
Under an agreement with prosecutors, Taylor will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy, Koeleveld said. In exchange, prosecutors will seek a sentence no longer than a year and a day, which would be reduced by the two months he served in a Monaco jail after his initial 2018 arrest. Taylor has also agreed to settle a parallel Securities and Exchange Commission case.
A spokesman for the Manhattan US attorney’s office declined to comment. Koeleveld didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Taylor worked for Moelis in London when he was alleged to have provided illegal tips on deals including numerous public companies. He and his contacts used unregistered “burner” phones and encrypted messaging apps to communicate.
Moelis declined to comment Friday. At the time the charges against Taylor were unsealed, a bank spokesperson said: “We are appalled that a former junior employee violated the core values that are most important to our firm. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement authorities since being made aware of the allegations.”
Former Swiss trader Marc Demane Debih, who was at the center of the ring and later admitted making $70 million from the scheme, reached a cooperation deal with US authorities. He helped convict other members of the ring, including former Goldman banker Bryan Cohen. Sentenced during the pandemic, Cohen was given one year of home confinement.
The case is US v. Taylor, 18-cr-184, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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