A former broker with Spartan Capital Securities pleaded guilty to conspiring to take part in an insider trading scheme, AdvisorHub reported.
36-year-old Jordan Meadow of Warren, N.J. entered the plea in New York to charges that included securities fraud and conspiracy. Meadow was charged in the case in June 2023 along with a friend, Steven Teixeira, the Chief Compliance Officer of an international payment processing company. They alleged traded based on material nonpublic information that Teixeira obtained from his girlfriend’s laptop while she was working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the indictment, Meadow would provide Teixeira with gifts such as Rolex watches in exchange for non-public information about corporate mergers and acquisitions activity from the laptop of the woman, an executive assistant at an investment bank.
Prosecutors said that Meadow used the tips from Teixeira obtained between November 2020 and April 2023 to make profits for himself of $730,000. The U.S. Attorney said that in 2021, Teixeira secretly accessed confidential work information on the laptop and learned that in less than a week, Penn National Gaming Inc. was going to acquire Score Media and Gaming Inc., a Canadian digital media company that was at the time listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market, for approximately $2.2 billion. Teixeira immediately began to purchase call option contracts in Score based on this and also told several friends to purchase Score’s stock.
Meadow admitted that he traded on tips about deals including Penn National Gaming’s takeover of Score Media and Gaming as well as Broadcom Inc.’s proposed takeover of VMware Inc., which prosecutors said was worth $65 billion. In his Penn National trading, Meadow allegedly bought more than 769 call option contracts before the deal was announced, eventually generating more than $5 million in profits for his clients, according to prosecutors. Meadow bought over 5,000 shares of VMWare stock and call options contracts and tipped a colleague to also buy the shares, and they eventually sold their holdings for a combined profit of more than $100,000.
Meadow said he also tipped a coworker and another person outside the office and traded on the information in both his personal accounts and those of clients at his firm. He also admitted submitting false information to FINRA.
Teixeira has also pleaded guilty as part of a separate plea agreement and is due to be sentenced in January. Meadow is scheduled to be sentenced in May and could face up to 25 years in prison.
Hyman Cotter PC routinely represents investors harmed when financial professionals and their firms engaged in misconduct that caused their clients investment losses. Our team includes lawyers who have worked for large financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley and UBS Financial Services, and regulatory bodies such as the SEC. If you think your financial professional or firm engaged in misconduct that caused you investment losses, contact Hyman Cotter PC at 312-291-4600 or through our online contact form for a no-cost evaluation of your matter.
