Former US Congressman Stephen Creta was convicted by a New York jury on Friday of trading on inside information he learned in 2018 as an advisor to T-Mobile US Inc ahead of its $23 billion merger with Sprint.
Buyer was a Republican from Indiana in the US House of Representatives between 1993 and 2011, before working as a corporate consultant.
Prosecutors said in a trial that began March 1 that the buyer bought Sprint stock after learning from a T-Mobile executive that the telecommunications companies were in merger talks in 2018 and engaged in another insider trading scheme in 2019.
Buyer took the stand during the trial and refused to trade on inside information. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The former Congressman was found guilty on four counts of securities fraud. Judge Richard Berman will impose sentencing on July 11.
According to prosecutors, Buyer made more than $100,000 from Sprint trades and more than $200,000 on stock in Navigant Consulting Inc., which he bought before Guidehouse acquired the company in 2019.
Prosecutors urged the jury to focus on the timing of Buyer’s trades, which occurred after employees of his client companies learned of the merger.
Buyer’s lawyers argued that there was no concrete evidence to show when they learned of the two mergers, and that they had relied on public research to pick the shares.
The former congressman was one of several people, including a former Goldman Sachs banker, arrested on insider trading charges in July as part of a crackdown by Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
