Prior to her indictment, Ms. Baridis had an upscale Manhattan apartment with rent of $2,400 per month. The extra money from the sale of information had afforded her a comfortable New York lifestyle. Her assets were frozen, and prosecutors obtained $100,00 in a scizure of those assets. Overall, the insider tips involved thirteen companies and netted those involved in the trading over $1 million.
Ms. Baridis entered a guilty plea in exchange for a lighter sentence contingent upon her cooperation. A college friend of Ms. Baridis also entered a guilty plea in federal court to charges of insider trading. Mr.Mitchell Sher, thirty-two, admitted that he made cash payments to Ms. Baridis in exchange for her furnishing confidential information about pending events such as mergers for Morgan Stanley clients.
Mr. Sher admitted that he used information provided to him by Ms. Baridis to trade in shares of Georgia-Pacific Crop., Burlington Resources, and two other companies. Unlike the ten other individuals charged in the case, Mr. Sher was not a broker but rather a vice president for a book distributor. He also admitted in his plea that Ms. Baridis had fed him confidential information in exchange for cash when she worked forSmith Barney earlier in her career.
When ask to comment on the Baridis case, an executive with Smith Barney said, “We had trusted the individual with great responsibility and that trust was misplaced.