| On Insider
Trading Charges Former FBI Trainee Markin
Has Public Funded Lawyer, Basis Sealed
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell
Book
BBC -
Honduras
- CIA
Trial Book - NY
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SDNY COURTHOUSE,
July 29 – Seth Markin was the
subject of an insider trading
press conference on July 25,
2022. Then for his presentment
he got a taxpayer-funded
lawyer, declaring himself
eligible in a still-sealed CJA
23 financial affidavit.
On July
25, U.S. District Court for
the Southern District of New
York Magistrate Sarah Netburn
approved and sealed his
Criminal Justice Act 23
affidavit. Inner City Press
has previously gotten unsealed
the CJA 23's of Michael
Avenatti, and Honduras alleged
narco trafficker Tigre
Bonilla. But others' keep
getting sealed.
Markin is
free on a $200,000 bond, with
a taxpayer funded lawyer. The
prosecutors said:
What kind
of insider trader big enough
for an SDNY press conference
is, on the same day, declared
eligible for publicly-paid
counsel?
In early
2021, SETH MARKIN and BRANDON
WONG together made more than
$1.4 million dollars in
illegal profits by trading in
stock based on inside
information that MARKIN
misappropriated from his
then-girlfriend, who was then
an attorney at a major law
firm in Washington D.C.
assigned to work on the
acquisition of Pandion
Therapeutics (“Pandion”) by
Merck & Co.
(“Merck”). To carry out
the illegal insider trading
scheme, MARKIN secretly looked
through his girlfriend’s
confidential work documents,
without her permission, and
learned that in a matter of
weeks, Merck, a publicly
traded pharmaceutical company,
was going to acquire Pandion,
a publicly traded
biotechnology company, for
approximately three times the
value of Pandion’s then-share
price. After
misappropriating this material
non-public information from
his girlfriend, MARKIN
purchased shares in Pandion,
and tipped several friends and
family members, including
WONG. WONG, in turn,
purchased hundreds of
thousands of dollars’ worth of
Pandion shares, and told at
least eight other people to
purchase Pandion shares.
In total, MARKIN and WONG
directly or indirectly caused
more than twenty people to
trade in Pandion stock based
on the material non-public
information that MARKIN
misappropriated from his
girlfriend resulting in
millions of dollars of
illegally obtained trading
profits.
At the time of the relevant
trades, MARKIN had been
accepted into the Federal
Bureau of Investigation as a
new agent trainee. In
addition to perpetrating the
insider trading scheme, MARKIN
lied to conceal his illegal
Pandion trades. In or
about June 2021, after MARKIN
and his girlfriend had ended
their relationship, and as
MARKIN was preparing to begin
training as a new agent at the
FBI Academy in Quantico,
Virginia, MARKIN’s former
girlfriend called him to ask
why MARKIN’s name had come up
in an inquiry by the Financial
Industry Regulatory Authority
(“FINRA”) into trading in
Pandion stock. In response,
MARKIN lied to her and falsely
claimed that he did not trade
in Pandion stock. In
addition, in or about November
2021, MARKIN lied to FBI
agents when he was interviewed
about his Pandion trading,
conduct that forms the basis
for a separate charge against
MARKIN for making false
statements.
MARKIN, 31, of Washington
Crossing, Pennsylvania, has
been charged with nine counts
of securities fraud and eight
counts of tender offer fraud,
each of which carries a
maximum term of 20 years in
prison, and one count of
conspiracy and one count of
making false statements, each
of which carries a maximum
term of 5 years in prison, and
was arrested this
morning.
WONG, 38, of New York, has
been charged with eleven
counts of securities fraud and
ten counts of tender offer
fraud, each of which carries a
maximum term of 20 years in
prison, and one count of
conspiracy, which carries a
maximum term of 5 years in
prison and was arrested this
morning. The case has
been assigned to U.S. District
Judge Edgardo Ramos
The case is US v.
Markin, et al., 22-cr-395
(Ramos / Netburn)
***
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