Visiting BigLaw attorney gets prison sentence for insider trading
A Brazilian lawyer has been sentenced to two months in prison for trading on inside information that he obtained while working as a visiting attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C. Image from Shutterstock.
A Brazilian lawyer has been sentenced to two months in prison for trading on inside information that he obtained while working as a visiting attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C.
U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of the District of Columbia sentenced visiting lawyer Romero Cabral Da Costa Neto on Wednesday, according to Reuters, Law360, Bloomberg Law and a Dec. 20 press release from the Department of Justice.
Costa, 33, of Rio de Janeiro, was also ordered to forfeit $42,649. He had earned more than $200,000 per year as a visiting attorney, according to Bloomberg Law.
Nichols said he viewed Costa’s conduct as “egregious,” according to Bloomberg Law. The insider trading wasn’t “spur of the moment or reactive,” the Washington, D.C., federal judge said.
Costa used his position at the law firm to access confidential client files by conducting keyword searches on the internal file management system, prosecutors said. Costa pleaded guilty to insider trading in November.
Prosecutors had sought an eight-month prison sentence.
A Gibson Dunn spokesperson said in August it had cooperated with prosecutors and terminated its relationship with Costa, according to Reuters.
