Ex-Nasdaq Exec Pleads Guilty Over Insider Trading ("Fox in a Henhouse")

Source: Reuters

Ex-Nasdaq exec pleads guilty over insider trading

WASHINGTON | Thu May 26, 2011 5:40pm EDT
By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Nasdaq executive, Donald Johnson, pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of securities fraud for insider trading to reap more than $640,000 over three years, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Johnson, 56, worked as a director and then managing director of Nasdaq's market intelligence desk before retiring in October 2009, according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

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He received advance information about upcoming companies' earnings, news releases and key personnel changes which he used to buy and sell stocks eight times between August 2006 and July 2009 to earn the illicit profits, according to court papers.

"Mr. Johnson was a fox in a hen-house," Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, told reporters during a conference call. "He cheated the system to line his own pockets. He violated his duty to companies and the investing public alike."

Read more: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE74P77320110526?irpc=932

How about going after the real crooks on Wall St.?

Wonder what hotel he will have to check into?

This guy is nothing. How about going about the boys at Goldman Sachs?