Reports: Ex-IBMer Moffat Poised To Plead Guilty In Galleon Case
An attorney for Moffat confirmed Tuesday that his client was prepared to waive indictment, according to Reuters, but offered no further comment.
Moffat, let go by Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM following his arrest by federal authorities in October 2009, was charged along with five others following an insider trading probe that stretched from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
A second round of arrests in November 2009 brought the number of people facing criminal charges in the case to 21.
Moffat had previously denied charges that he provided fellow defendant Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland, of $1 billion-hedge fund New Castle Partners, with material, non-public information related to IBM, Sun Microsystems and Advanced Micro Devices.
The prosecution's evidence against Moffat includes a series of wiretapped phone conversations with Chiesi, a portfolio manager at New Castle Partners and Chiesi's boss Kurland, a senior managing director and general partner. In those calls, Moffat allegedly passed along insider information to the two traders about such high-tech mega-deals as AMD's spin-off of its manufacturing assets in 2008 and IBM's potential acquisition of Sun in early 2009.
Moffat would become the 11th person to plead guilty in the case. In February, former Intel Capital executive Rajiv Goel pleaded guilty to fraud and told a federal judge that Galleon Management founder and co-defendant Raj Rajaratnam gave him money and made illegal stock trades on his behalf.
Moffat's likely plea could be part of a similar deal to cooperate with prosecutors, who in recent months appear to have incrementally bolstered their cases in that fashion against Rajaratnam and Chiesi, considered to be the alleged ringleaders in the case. Both have pleaded not guilty and face criminal trials set to begin Oct. 25.