22              MS. SZCZEPANIK:  Good morning.  Ladies and gentlemen

       23    of the jury, this is a case about fraud, corruption, and

       24    betrayal.  It's about a group of short sellers of stock led by

       25    that man, Anthony Elgindy, who came together to form a corrupt

                   ALLAN R. SHERMAN, CSR, RPR  Official Court Reporter
               United States District Court  Eastern District of New York

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                        Opening/Government/Szczepanik

        1    criminal enterprise to steal confidential law enforcement

        2    information so that they could make money in the stock market.

        3              You see a short seller is a stock trader who makes

        4    money when a stock price goes down.  So Elgindy thought what

        5    better way to make money as a short seller than to find out

        6    what companies are being investigated by the government before

        7    the public knows that information.  So he teamed up with

        8    someone that had access to the information.  He teamed up with

        9    that man, Jeffrey Royer, a corrupt FBI agent who used his

       10    position to access and steal confidential law enforcement

       11    information to provide it to the enterprise.  And who were the

       12    victims of this scheme?  They were the investors who were on

       13    the other side of the trades.  They were members of the public

       14    who did not have the same stolen information that the

       15    defendants had when they made their stock trades.

       16              And ladies and gentlemen, the integrity of the stock

       17    market depends on a fair and even playing field and the

       18    integrity of law enforcement depends on the honesty of its

       19    agents.  But these defendants put their greed above all of

       20    that.

       21              You'll see that Elgindy portrayed himself as a

       22    crusader against fraud in the marketplace but, ladies and

       23    gentlemen, the exact opposite was true.  Elgindy was

       24    opportunistic thief who saw Agent Royer as his winning lottery

       25    ticket.  He used the information Royer stole which was

                   ALLAN R. SHERMAN, CSR, RPR  Official Court Reporter
               United States District Court  Eastern District of New York

                                                                       37
                        Opening/Government/Szczepanik

        1    information about confidential FBI agents, Securities &

        2    Exchange investigations and information about people's

        3    criminal backgrounds.  He took that information to further the

        4    goals of the conspiracy.  They used it to commit insider

        5    trading, market manipulation and extortion so that he and the

        6    members of the criminal enterprise could make money at the

        7    expense of the investing public.