Grad Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading

NEW YORK—Eugene M. Plotkin ’00, a former Goldman Sachs associate, pleaded guilty Tuesday to an insider trading conspiracy that reportedly earned him and his partner profits of more than $6.7 million.

Plotkin, a former Lowell House resident who was arrested for the scheme in April 2006, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and eight counts of insider trading in a U.S. District court in New York.

His attorney, Edward M. Little, said that Plotkin accepted responsibility for his actions, which included paying an analyst at Merrill Lynch to leak information on pending mergers and acquisitions and paying two employees of a printing company to reveal the content of Business Week magazine ahead of publication.

“After really considering the facts of the case, he decided to, on our advice, accept responsibility for what he actually did do,” Little said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Plotkin, once a member of the Harvard Ballroom Dance Team, partnered up with a colleague at Goldman Sachs, David Pajcin, to form the insider-trading ring. Pajcin is cooperating with authorities.

According to the original criminal complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange commission, Plotkin and Pajcin were able to create a “widespread and brazen international scheme of serial insider trading."

"Words can't express how sorry I am for the harm I have caused to others, especially my family," Plotkin told the court on Tuesday.

Though the potential maximum prison term for the charges against Plotkin was 165 years, Little said that he expected the plea to result in a much shorter sentence and that Plotkin's legal team had been "able to negotiate a plea agreement with the government that was acceptable." In the agreement, Plotkin agreed not to appeal any sentence between 55 and 71 months, but Little said that the the decision is ultimately "in the hands of the judges" who will sentence Plotkin on November 30.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.