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Two former National Planning Corporation brokers "threw away" their careers by trading on inside information, says a lawyer for one of the men.
"They are just normal dudes and they just screwed up," says Jeremy Warren, the lawyer for Akis Eracleous.
Eracleous and Chad Wiegand, based in San Diego, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and insider trading in a federal case in Southern California earlier this month, lawyers for both say. Wiegand's lawyer is Joseph McMullen.
A parallel SEC case accuses the pair of insider trading based on tips that Wiegand received from his brother-in-law, Michael Fefferman. The two brokers have agreed to be barred from the industry, the commission says.
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In all, the alleged insider trading between April 2009 and April 2012 resulted in illegal profits of approximately $530,000 to a number of clients and friends of the pair, according to the SEC, which continues to seek disgorgement in the case.
After watching Wiegand struggle to care for his family as a single father, Fefferman tipped him off to a series of anticipated developments at the San Diego-based pharmaceutical company Ardea BioSciences, where Fefferman served as senior director of information technology, according to the federal case. Wiegand then...