Ex-Goldman Sachs, Blackstone employee charged with securities fraud for tipping friends about deals

livemint.com:

Bloomberg has reported. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department claim that 26-year-old Anthony Viggiano had tipped two of his friends to deals that he heard about while working at the two Wall Street firms. The charges detail how group made more than $400,000 on trades passed around on messaging apps like Signal as well as Xbox chat.

“Viggiano betrayed the trust of his employers by tipping his friends," Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “No matter how evasive insider traders’ conduct, or the lengths gone to hide their offenses, this Office will track down and prosecute those who attempt to cheat the system," he said. This is fifth such incident involving a Goldman Sachs employee in recent years.

In a previous incident that happened in 2022, a Goldman banker was accused of passing stock tips to a squash buddy. Prior to that, three insider trading cases involving Goldman staffers over the course of an 18-month period that ended in October 2019. Both Goldman and Blackstone said they are cooperating with prosecutors, Bloomberg stated.

“The allegations in the indictment are egregious," said Mary Athridge, a spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs. “The firm has zero tolerance for this kind of behavior." Speaking of Viggiano, he worked in the asset and wealth management division, according to the indictment. He had previously resigned from a post at Blackstone, after the firm discovered he had been trading without pre-clearance.