By Chris Dolmetsch and Patricia Hurtado – Aug 25, 2011 10:51 AM ET
Craig Drimal, the former Galleon Group LLC trader who pleaded guilty to insider-trading charges, should get a prison term of 70 to 80 months, which is within federal sentencing guidelines, the U.S. said in a memo.
Drimal pleaded guilty last month in federal court in New York charges of conspiracy and securities fraud. Drimal admitted that he and others at Galleon traded on inside information obtained from lawyers working on transactions involving 3Com Corp. and Axcan Pharma Inc. in 2007. Drimal said the information was obtained from Arthur Cutillo and Brien Santarlas, lawyers at Boston-based Ropes & Gray LLP.
Drimal has suggested that the court impose community service or home confinement in lieu of a “substantial” prison term, prosecutors said. The request should be denied in order to send a “strong message of deterrence to others in the hedge fund community” and because the “nature and extent of his criminal conduct doesn’t warrant community service,” prosecutors said.
“Drimal has no excuse for his illegal conduct,” prosecutors said in the memo, which was filed yesterday. “He grew up in a stable, loving family with no financial difficulties. He is a college graduate. He has a loving and supportive family. He fully understood that insider trading was illegal and yet repeatedly disregarded the law to make a lot of money.”
Drimal is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan on Aug. 31.
Drimal’s attorney, Jane Anne Murray, didn’t immediately return a telephone message seeking comment on the sentencing memo.
The case is U.S. v. Goffer, 10-cr-00056, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net; Patricia Hurtado in New York at pathurtado@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
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