Ex-Colts Neck stockbroker sentenced for insider trading

The onetime Colts Neck stockbroker who admitted a role in a five-year, half-billion-dollar, cloak-and-dagger-type insider-trading scheme is sentenced to spend three years in prison.

In a Trenton federal courtroom, Vladimir Eydelman, 44, was also ordered to forfeit $1,236.657.13, pay a $15,000 fine, and serve three years of parole supervision when he is released.

Eydelman is the last of three defendants to be sentenced for turning stolen corporate information from an international law firm into more than $5,600,000 in profits. He pleaded guilty to one count each of conspriacy to commit securities and tender offer fraud, securities fraud, and tender offer fraud.

Earlier this month, Steven Metro, 42, of Katonah, New York, was given a 46-month sentence. Frank Tamayo, 43, of Brooklyn, was sentenced to a year behind bars.

According to investigators, the bulk of the activity took place between 2009 and 2013.

Eydelman, during terms at Oppenheimer & Co. and Morgan Stanley, initiated trades based on nonpublic information obtained by Metro, managing clerk of Simpson Tacher & Bartlett LLP, funneled through Metro's friend and former law school classmate Tamayo.

Metro scoured his company's databases for information involving corporate mergers, acquisitions, tender offers and other transactions, using search terms including "merger agreement," "bid letter," "engagement letter," and "due diligence," in addition to client identities and reference numbers, authorities said.

Metro relayed the information to Tamayo in bars, coffee shops and other common meeting spots near their midtown Manhattan offices, authorities said, divulging names and/or ticker symbols of companies in which to invest, timing of planned transactions, and projected impact on stock values.

Tamayo slipped details on scraps of paper or napkins to Eydelman in open spots near his work place, such as under the clock in Grand Central Terminal, authorities said, taking each shard and chewing on it after Eydelman had committed it to memory, until it was mashed into pulp.

Investigators said that Eydelman then bought securities for himself, family members, friends and clients, including Tamayo, flipping the shares and covering any positions once transactions were publicized.

Tamayo reinvested about $7,000 in Metro's profits from the first purchase, which had grown to about $168,000 by October 2013 and advance trading on at least 13 planned corporate deals, prosecutors said. Metro tried to cash out by January 2014, and the following month Eydelman passed $7.000 to Tamayo, with the expectation that it would go to Metro for gleaning the details.