HOBOKEN — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged an attorney at international law firm Ropes & Gray LLP in the agency’s ongoing investigation into a $20 million insider trading ring involving Wall Street traders, lawyers, and hedge fund managers.
The SEC alleges that Brien P. Santarlas, 33, of Hoboken, N.J. allegedly “tipped material nonpublic information about confidential proposed corporate acquisitions by firm clients to a network of others in exchange for kickbacks,” according to an SEC press release. The agency notes, “Santarlas worked with another former attorney in Ropes & Gray’s New York office, Arthur J. Cutillo, to access and [allegedly] misappropriate the confidential information. The SEC last month charged Cutillo and eight others with insider trading.”
The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that Santarlas pleaded guilty in federal court.
They quote his lawyer, Robert G. Stahl, as saying, “Brien is a decent young guy who made a series of errors of misjudgment.”