Posted on 07/16/2004 7:35:46 AM PDT by wagglebee
All she had to do was tell the truth, period. She lied to protect her friend, Bacanovic.
Maybe someone could correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that the recipient of insider information is committing any crime by acting on that information.
If the broker says that Sam Waksal (ex-President, Imclone) is selling, and you sell, the broker may be in trouble but not you. Am I wrong?
If I'm not wrong, then Martha could have told the truth and kept her stock.
It's not like she's going to be sharing a cell with a serial rapist. Sheesh. If she lied to the FBI she gets what she deserves.
First, let me say that I'm no fan of Martha Stewart. Her smuggish white-bread home-in-the-Hamptons you-can-be-a-good-homemaker-if-you-just-try attitude always brought my hand up in a make-believe pistol, aimed squarely at her clean white smock.
That being (too much) said, Martha Stewart would have never even been charged with anything if it weren't for the fact that it happened so soon after the Enron debacle. The prosecution needed an example to show that now "we're tough on inside trading." But she wasn't guilty of that.
Not wanting to lose face, and knowing that the American people were hinged on this trial, they were determined to make an example. In the end, they caught her for lying!
I didn't know lying was against the law, unless you were under oath or advised that if you lied you could face a prison sentence. If that's the case, I have 239 thousand five-month sentences staring me in the face.
Finally, if the prosecutors didn't know that the Martha Stewart case wouldn't be picked up by the media, and played like a circus, then they would have never gone forward with it.
This is all just an another example of the pandering to the envious in country, to quench our lust for seeing those to whom we think inferior, excoriated, be it just or unjust. The thought of Martha Stewart in a Federal Penetentiary is so soothing to some, because now they can think they are better then she is, after all.
I have never been a fan of Martha Stewart, but I've never been a fan of a Federal lynch mob either, especially when the public cries out in cheer.
legally you are wrong, sorry.
She is a broker.
She is on the board of the NYStock Exchange.
She is on the board of her own publicly traded company.
She acted on information that was not public, before it became public. If she had and did nothing nobody would be in trouble. She acted on it, lied to the FBI to cover that act.
This was not information sent to "joe consumer", this was information sent to "jane insider/stocker broker/boardmember NYSE/boardmember MarthaStewart Omnimedia". Clinton never practiced law but he did loose his law degree for perjury.l
Yes, she knew it was going to tank. What she didn't know was that it would return a nice 50% profit had she just held onto it.
Which I'm sure she now wish she had.
I imagine the exact same scenario over and over come Judgement Day.
Actually even if she did know it would return to $60/share 2 1/2 years later, that's just the break even point for her, that is dead money as well.
What we don't know is she may have been one to have bought IMCL back when it was in the $10 range from April 2002 till February of 2003. If so she made a killing.
Sorry to reply so late.
What did she lie to her shareholders about?
She said she did nothing wrong, that she told her broker to sell at $60. and she wasn't acting on inside information, that she didn't lie to authorities, that it was all a mistake.
(If an officer of the company intentionally lies to the shareholders to prop up the price of the company stock, that's known as securities fraud. This charge against Stewart, which carries a 10-year prison term, was dismissed on a technicality.)
So, people held onto her stock. Others, who didn't believe her, sold. The stock plummeted.
I believe there's a sharholder civil suit now against her.
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