A judge has sentenced former U.S. Rep. Christopher Collins to 26 months in jail after pleading guilty to in an insider trading scheme.
U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick in Manhattan sentenced the 69-year-old Republican on Friday afternoon.
Collins’ lawyers said he was sorry and should face no prison time but prosecutors had said in written arguments to the judge that he should go to prison for nearly five years.
An emotional Collins addressed the courtroom during the afternoon sentencing hearing.
‘I violated my core values and there is no excuse,’ he said as he apologized to his family, constituents and to the FBI for lying to them.
Although Collins faced a maximum of five years in prison for each of the two charges, prosecutors agreed as part of a plea deal that a reasonable sentence would be a total of less than five years.
‘I don’t view this as just a spur of the moment loss of judgment,’ U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick said during the hearing.
Chris Collins, a former U.S. Congressman from New York has been sentenced to 26-months in jail after pleading guilty to taking part in an insider trading scheme. He is pictured on Friday
Former U.S. Rep. Chris Collins arrives at federal court for his sentencing on Friday. Collins pleaded guilty last fall to insider trading and lying to the FBI
They said that Collins and his son, Cameron, were worth a total of $35 million when they conspired to sell shares in a pharmaceutical company before devastating news was made public.
The trading, prosecutors said, enabled Cameron Collins and friends to dodge $800,000 in losses.
He was the company’s largest shareholder, holding nearly 17 per cent of Innate Immunotherapeutics Ltd shares, a biotechnology company headquartered in Sydney, Australia, as well as a seat on its board.
Collins was attending the Congressional Picnic at the White House on June 22, 2017, when he received an email from the company’s chief executive saying that a trial of a drug the company developed to treat multiple sclerosis was a clinical failure.
Collins responded to the email saying: ‘Wow. Makes no sense. How are these results even possible???’ the indictment said.
It said he then called his son, Cameron Collins, and, after several missed calls, they spoke for more than six minutes.
The next morning, according to the indictment, Cameron Collins began selling his shares, unloading enough over a two-day period to avoid $570,900 in losses before a public announcement of the drug trial results. After the announcement, the company’s stock price plunged 92%.
CBS News footage captured Collins, circled in red, on the phone on the White House South Lawn during the time frame prosecutors charge he was talking to his son about the stock
Knowing that Innate’s stock would plunge when news got out, Collins ‘from the White House lawn’ tried to reach his son to tip him off so he could sell his shares, prosecutors said.
They said he then conspired with family members to claim Cameron Collins and friends sold shares because they were spooked by a temporary halt in the trading of the stock rather than because they knew the stock price would fall 92%.
His lawyers had urged the judge to spare Collins from prison, citing his contrition, advanced age, charitable works and a low chance that he would commit any more crimes.
‘Chris comes before the Court humbled, penitent, and remorseful,’ the lawyers wrote. ‘The public humiliation will follow Chris and mar him for the rest of his life.’
He was convicted for trading on insider information while a board member and a stakeholder of Australian biotechnology company Innate Immunotherapeutics. He is pictured on Friday
‘I understood I had a duty not to disclose confidential information,’ Collins, 69, told Manhattan federal judge Vernon Broderick as he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and making false statements in October.
‘I regret my actions,’ he said of leaking confidential information to his son Cameron in an urgent phone call made from a White House picnic.
‘This is something I will live with for the rest of my life,’ he added.
Prosecutors used phone logs to prove that Collins passed on information, related to a drug trial for a product meant to combat Multiple Sclerosis, to his son, who soon initiated stock sales.
CBS published footage of Collins attending the White House picnic at the time he allegedly got the stock information. He was pictured speaking on the phone just as Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner walks by.
Collins had represented western New York since his election to the 27th Congressional District of New York in 2012 and was one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump for president in the 2016 Republican primary.
He did so before it was clear the business executive had any chance of winning the nomination, saying the country needs ‘a chief executive, not a chief politician.’
He resigned when he decided to plead guilty to a single conspiracy count in October, but prosecutors faulted him for campaigning for a re-election race he won after his arrest and then continuing to serve.
He has maintained close ties to the White House and acted as a surrogate for Trump.
After learning a drug had failed a clinical trial, Collins told his son who sold the shares before news became public saving them $800k in losses. He is pictured arriving at court on Friday