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Man charged with insider trading
By BEN FINLEY
Bucks County Courier Times
LOWER MAKEFIELD - A Lower Makefield man was charged last week with making more than $1 million on an insider trading deal on Wall Street.
Alan L. Tucker, 46, of Friar Drive, was a partner in a New York-based financial consulting firm and a tenured professor of finance when he committed 10 counts of securities fraud, according to federal officials.
In fall 2006, one of Tucker's partners allegedly tipped him off about a soon-to-be inked, $2.8 million cash merger between two companies. Tucker allegedly bought more than 20,000 shares and other stock options of the company that was about to be bought.
When the deal went public, Tucker's stocks soared in price. He made more than $1 million in illegal profits, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission and a U.S. Attorney's Office in New York.
The companies that merged were International Securities Exchange Holdings Inc. and Eurex, a European derivative exchange. Eurex now owns ISE. Tucker was partners with his alleged co-conspirators, John Marshall and Mark Larson, both of New York State, in the financial consulting firm Marshall Tucker & Associates LLC.
According to federal authorities, Marshall was on the board of ISE when he told Tucker and Larson about the merger. Larson profited from some ISE stock he purchased, according to court documents.
All three face a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the 10 counts of securities fraud and a maximum $5 million fine. Each faces one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
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A woman who answered the door at Tucker's house said she didn't think he would want to comment. The Courier Times was unsuccessful in reaching Tucker through e-mails sent to his addresses at Pace University and New York University, where he teaches.
Tucker and his pals should've known better, said R. Foster Winans, a Doylestown man who spent time in federal prison for insider trading.
It looks like your standard, plain vanilla, stupid, ridiculous, fraudulent act of someone who thinks they can make a quick buck on the inside, he said Tuesday.
Winans, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who used his job to get insider information, said it's not hard to get caught.
Every time a security trades, there's a human being somewhere who has a financial interest in the outcome of that trade, he said. If I'm the guy who sold the stock options to the inside trader, I'm the guy who's going to say, "I got screwed.'
He added: Somebody's going to notice. And they're going to turn you in for it. That's how I got caught.