Over a fifteen-year period, my co-accused and I purchased and sold stock with inside information in over a hundred separate deals, churning hundreds of million of dollars for an eventual eight-figure US dollar gain. But that's now gone.
All of it, spent or confiscated by authorities on both sides of the Canada/US border. As for my co-accused, a person that was my best friend, someone that I loved like a brother and that I saw or spoke with every day for near twenty years … he's dead. He committed suicide hours before we were scheduled to fly together to New York to plead guilty to inside trading, money laundering, and breach of fiduciary duty in what we were told was the longest-running insider trading scheme ever discovered by authorities.
“So how do I get rich inside trading?”
I get asked that question or some variation of it by almost every person that learns about my past or the fact that I am still the only person in Canada to receive a Federal sentence of imprisonment for the activity. I have yet to tell anyone exactly how I would do it (if I were to do it again) to not get caught or what I learned from my mistakes and from the questions that investigators in the United States and Canada asked me after I cooperated with them. I haven't told anyone because I’m fairly certain of the answer and equally certain that it could work ... but not completely certain. Because I don't want anyone to even start down a path that led to me losing everything -- my money, my children, my freedom, my best friend -- I never answer that question as I know I could. Instead, I usually just say, "Don't get caught" as it has the benefit of being true, doesn't tell them what I learned through experience, and leaves open the thought for them that the best way not to get caught once you start, really, is to stop and never do it again.
“So how do I get rich insider trading?” You DON'T. So don’t even start. The personal losses can last forever and, they’ll always exceed even the greatest of monetary gains.
They did in my case.
The above blog post is for informational purposes only and based on my own observations and life experience and does not constitute financial, accounting, or legal advice. If you have any doubts as to the merits of any investment, you should always seek advice from a registered independent financial advisor of which I am not and have never been.
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