Text below in Anthony's words
SI BOB
"ANTHONY'S STATEMENT"
THE COURT: Mr. Elgindy, what would you like to say, sir?
THE DEFENDANT: Good afternoon, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Good afternoon.
THE DEFENDANT: I'd like to start off by saying
1 first off that my remarks are probably going to be a little
2 longer than most. I'm not going to be offering --
3 THE COURT: Why does that not surprise me.
4 THE DEFENDANT: I appreciate that, Your Honor.
5 THE COURT: Take as much time as you like,
6 Mr. Elgindy.
7 THE DEFENDANT: I'm not going to be offering any
8 chat. I hope, Your Honor, that you will find what I have to
9 say interesting, relevant and worthy of your consideration
10 before you sentence me, sir.
11 As the Court is aware, I have been deeply involved
12 in the litigation of my case. I have spent thousands and
13 thousands of hours reading, reviewing and analyzing everything
14 including the record. Since the verdicts I have published
15 dozens of posts connected to this case and if at times my
16 emotions and frustrations took me off course, I do apologize.
17 It was never my intent to offend the Court. As a result, I
18 have asked that all posts that the government quoted be
19 deleted.
20 On Saturday, May 18th, 2002 my wife and I celebrated
21 the completion and construction of our new home so we invited
22 everyone we knew to a party. Hundreds of people including
23 family and friends, folks we knew from Kosovo, neighbors and
24 site members from all over the country and the world showed
25 up. We started at noon and it went on into the early hours of
1 the next day. It was paradise and life was good. In fact, it
2 had never been better. I was a well known short seller with a
3 successful business. I was in books, magazines and on TV. We
4 had three beautiful children, our health and a seemingly
5 bright future. I had taken our savings of less than $60,000
6 and turned it into millions upon millions of dollars, enough
7 money to last all of our lives, and by doing so I had become a
8 credible voice in our financial markets.
9 As a trader who lived in California, my typical day
10 started between 5 and 6 a.m. Each day when I got up I'd grab
11 a cup of coffee and head to my desk in our home and just like
12 usual my youngest son, Sammy, was up waiting for me. He used
13 to climb up on my lap and start me off by tapping my keyboard,
14 zapping the screen savers on the four flat panel monitors on
15 my desk and every morning this magic would light up his face
16 with a smile. He had his own keyboard and he worked it
17 furiously as I beat on my own. Once Sammy got me going, I was
18 ready to trade. I was ready to take on any obstacle. It was
19 simply amazing to be there with him every morning.
20 Three days later on May 21st a couple of hours after
21 the market closed our entire world collapsed. FBI agents
22 poured into my office and whisked me away instantly ending my
23 life and career as a short seller. Unlike most short sellers
24 who operated in the background, I was up front, in your face
25 and vocal. I voiced my concerns about public companies,
1 promoters and insiders who took billions and billions of
2 dollars from the pockets of the average investor.
3 When people are exposed, when their misdeeds are
4 uncovered they can get angry, very angry. For years these
5 promoters, these insiders had complained about me. They
6 complained about me to each other, they complained on message
7 boards and even to the SEC and FBI. Initially they used the
8 Internet to attack and question my allegations, my conclusions
9 and my trading opinions. For example, from just one stock
10 message board that listed over 550,000 messages I would like
11 to offer four very short messages:
12 Post number 91,953 says: Come on AP, open that
13 childish bashing mouth of yours. We dare you. Just know that
14 about 35 to 40 people are going to immediately copy it, print
15 it and send it straight to the SEC along with any other
16 pertinent information that we learn, we easily obtain on you
17 to send your sorry ass to jail, excuse me.
18 When these people and their threats and their
19 information -- I'm sorry, when these people and their threats
20 failed to rebut my information, I was attacked with hatred and
21 racism. On the same message board 20,000 messages later they
22 wrote in post number 112,052:
23 Don't worry about Anthony, the convicts have already
24 heard all about his money and the Aryan Brotherhood is
25 preparing a surprise.
1 Post number 125,639: Everybody who thinks that
2 person should be kicked out of the country should contact the
3 immigration office near you and complain about this POS.
4 Let's get rid of this guy for good.
5 Post number 271,471: Yes, and remember that Ali
6 Baba's religion calls on him to cause chaos so that he may
7 start the jihad or the holy war, that's what Anthony is all
8 about, he is a stock trading version of Osama Bin Laden, he is
9 in essence a big POS.
10 As you can see, I am attacked repeatedly and
11 viciously. Words like immigrant, terrorist and Osama Bin
12 Laden are thrown around back and forth among these promoters
13 and hidden insiders. After 9/11 we all know that some of
14 these people seized on my Arab roots to make racist, hateful
15 and spurious allegations, an attempt not only to harm me but
16 ultimately to silence me so I guess the language in the posts
17 that I just read isn't really that surprising, or at least
18 shouldn't be. However, there is one problem, these posts
19 weren't written after my arrest in May of '02, they weren't
20 even written after 9/11, these messages were written in March
21 and April of 2000 on the E-Connect.dot message board.
22 The trial established that E-Connect was a company
23 that I exposed and reported to the SEC. SEC attorneys Pat
24 Hunnius and Bob Tercero both testified that they read my
25 information, used it and then halted trading in the stock.
1 The company's CEO, Tom Hughes, is currently serving a six-year
2 sentence for defrauding his own shareholders and investors of
3 100 million real dollars.
4 Your Honor, these messages were posted 18 months
5 before 9/11, 18 months before I'd ever learned who Osama Bin
6 Laden was. Anyway, as you can see, trading can be quite
7 brutal and I did well extremely but it was often times
8 frightening to read some of the things they wrote. However, I
9 believed that I would be safe if I disclosed only information
10 that I believed was accurate and verifiable in the context of
11 my work which was to get information to the public rather than
12 hide it.
13 I feel I must describe very briefly the structure of
14 the market that discourages negative news about stocks
15 regardless of the bona fides of the information promoting
16 these stocks. In addition, because of the Court's earlier
17 remarks regarding the 32 securities and the calculation I
18 believe that the following information may be of value.
19 Back in 1995 there were approximately 5,000 broker-
20 dealers in the United States and of those, only 500 or so were
21 licensed, capitalized and registered as full blown NASDAQ
22 market makers. I was one of them. These firms have the
23 ability to move stock prices up and down as they see fit. As
24 a market maker I was privy to information and trading
25 exemptions that no one in the public has access to. I know --
1 I knew about FBI and SEC investigations and I knew other
2 traders and market makers who knew the same information that I
3 did and we all traded.
4 Here in this country to short a stock you must first
5 borrow the stock. This is called an affirmative
6 determination. Then you sell it. Then you buy it back to
7 replace the shares originally borrowed. However, since those
8 who are running a scam know that they are running a scam, they
9 usually don't let their shares get out to be loaned out and
10 they insist on other shareholders to do the same. This
11 prevents average people such as me or anyone else in this
12 room, in the courtroom from being able to short any stock we
13 suspect is a fraud.
14 Here in this country the only people who could have
15 shorted BioPulse, the company that claimed to cure cancer with
16 urine, were the NASDAQ market makers. The only people who
17 could short Seaview and the ridiculous underwater surveillance
18 cameras were the market makers. Traders at these firms are
19 completely exempt from these artificial, meritless and bizarre
20 requirements, they can short any stock at any time for any
21 price for any reason without borrowing a share.
22 When I quit the NASD and became a private citizen
23 trading my own capital, I thought it was exceedingly
24 anomalous, indeed, perverse in an economic sense that I had to
25 trade in Canada to be on a level playing field with the
1 members only club run by the NASD. This is precisely why only
2 a tiny, tiny fraction of my site members, those who qualified
3 and opened a Canadian account had the ability to short any of
4 the obscure bulletin board stocks in this case. That is why
5 the government was forced to include unknown traders and hedge
6 funds from an unknown and top secret chat room. Average
7 Americans are locked out, they are frozen out from earning any
8 of the billions and billions of dollars these traders get to
9 split up amongst themselves. And that is why 99 percent of
10 all naked short selling then and now is done by these 500
11 market makers. It is a rigged system and that was my real
12 message. I wanted to get the average person interested in
13 participating in something that for 215 years has been
14 unavailable to them as Americans.
15 I created the free site Inside Truth.com and
16 immersed myself in the work I love. As a result, I sent out
17 over 45,000 free research reports, over 750,000 e-mails and
18 made another half million statements about thousands of trades
19 and companies and hundreds of scams and frauds all over the
20 Internet from Dear Anthony to Anthony Pacific to Inside Truth.
21 I did not lie about these companies nor did I make stuff up.
22 I said exactly what I believed to be true. There was nothing
23 more noble than exposing promoters, scams, insiders and hype.
24 For example, in January of 1999 when a company
25 called USA Talks announced unlimited local and long distance
1 calls for $20 a month the stock soared from $3 to over $50 a
2 share giving shoulders over one and a half billion dollars in
3 stock. I spotted it and immediately initiated coverage. I
4 posted: "The California network does not work and it sucks."
5 Then I posted: "Portnoy, the CEO, is hypester behind failed
6 Digitech." Followed by: "Overinflated pig... red flag
7 central, one of the stinkiest stocks. What a scam. This
8 thing needs to be halted."
9 Then on January 26th I warned: "Very bad news looms
10 overhead." Then on January 27th I stated: "It will all be
11 crystal clear soon." Then two days later on January 29th:
12 "Bad news does hit and it is devastating. The SEC suspends
13 USAT and halts all trading wiping out all existing
14 shareholders instantly, over $1.5 billion in investor money
15 vanished with the press of a button by the SEC keeping true
16 character." I closed by posting: "Well, it just proves that
17 we know what we're doing. Nice one, sweet."
18 Did my public and free postings in the days before
19 the halt hurt or help investors, did I even have an obligation
20 to the public, did I have an obligation to any person or
21 group. The answer is, no, I did not. Did I have information
22 that no one else had, the answer is clearly, yes, I did. The
23 question then becomes what did I know and how did I know it.
24 Well, in 1999 I had never heard of Mr. Royer nor did
25 I know anyone else who could have possibly had told me that
1 there was an upcoming halt. I knew about the SEC, I knew
2 about SEC and FBI investigations all the time but I never knew
3 if they would ever actually act. The vast majority of
4 investigations go no where and in the few in which they did
5 act I was usually long gone by that time. I knew about the
6 SEC investigation into USAT because I started it. I knew of
7 the possible halt because I know exactly what the SEC looks
8 for. I did not know for sure that USAT would be halted but I
9 was pretty darn sure and it took me less than a day to say so
10 publicly. It was, after all, my information they were
11 reviewing, Your Honor.
12 As a short seller I use everything, I explore every
13 rumor, suspicion and lead. I dig, probe, read, write, wear
14 wires, wear disguises. I tried to interview and visit every
15 person and place where I suspected information may lie. If
16 something was a secret, it wouldn't be for long. In other
17 words, if you have a secret, I'm the last person you should
18 ever tell. Believe it or not, Your Honor, it is simple to
19 know the things that I did, not easy but simple, all you had
20 to do is supplicate what I've learned and what I experienced
21 over the years.
22 I started by becoming a licensed broker who sold
23 worthless junk to the public and I sold a lot of it. Then I
24 became a licensed principal and then a compliance officer. I
25 took over one firm, then I started another. I became a NASDAQ
1 market maker and I got to know all the others. I tracked
2 proven promoters and scammers and learned how to identify the
3 new ones. I called vendors, customers and alleged partners as
4 I hunted for lies. Then I learned how to track down former
5 employees and disgruntled workers, get them to talk to me for
6 nothing, for no reason at all. I woke each morning knowing
7 that I'd be reaching out to cops and regulators and inviting
8 them all to scrutinize my work.
9 During all of this I made hundreds of thousands of
10 trades and lost almost everything multiple times. Then at the
11 end of it all I had to do the seemingly impossible, I had to
12 learn and then try to perfect the trading discipline of
13 selling things I don't own, selling when the news is
14 fantastic, earth shattering and only getting better. I then
15 learned to buy when the world was ending, the sky is falling,
16 when zero wasn't low enough. It feels unnatural, it's being
17 done right.
18 I respectfully submit that anyone who joined my site
19 did so with the goal of either participating in all the things
20 that I did online in real-time or simply to watch over my
21 shoulder. On my private site I made over 3,000 trading calls,
22 other members made another 2,000. Most of my members were
23 intelligent and decent people from all walks of life. These
24 people paid site fees for those 5,000 trading calls, for the
25 education they gained from being around others who had
1 specialties they did not have. They gained from the
2 friendship and sense of community that we all shared and,
3 frankly, many of them were there to be entertained by myself
4 and others during the countless boring hours that are a
5 necessary part of every trader's day.
6 It has been four very long years since our life and
7 my career ended and I stand here exhausted in every
8 conceivable way. The government armed with a nuclear weapon
9 of RICO and pretrial restraint seized and froze everything we
10 owned, millions upon millions in legally earned money and
11 assets having deprived me and my family and my entire family
12 of all our financial resources, my standing in the community
13 and my professional and personal relationships were next.
14 Just as the promoters and insiders of E-Connect did
15 to prejudice and disparage me and just like what so many
16 others have done over the years, once again my Arab descent
17 was seized upon and I was then linked to hate and terror.
18 This time, however, it wasn't some disgruntled poster on some
19 backwater message board, it was the world's most powerful
20 government on the record in open court.
21 Overnight I was alienated, vilified and transformed
22 into a monster that no one wanted to be near. I was then
23 dragged 3,000 miles to the furthest possible location from my
24 home and family right here next to Ground Zero. Not only was
25 I brought to the country's most expensive city in which to
1 defend myself in but the country's most hostile environment
2 for an Arab accused of anything. The government developed
3 novel theories and without fair warning pursued me with
4 overwhelming zeal as I was forced to defend myself against a
5 breathtaking and unprecedented litany of charges and
6 allegations.
7 The allegations against me of possible terrorism
8 ties didn't just swirl around in the public domain, they
9 followed me back to the jail. On New Year's Day in the midst
10 of my trial I was attacked by a 300 pound mobster. As I sat
11 on the toilet this man burst in my cell and began beating me
12 with two padlocks tied to a sock. He didn't stop swinging
13 until the locks had fallen away. I was soaked in my own
14 blood, my ear drum ruptured. I needed stitches, medication
15 and a doctor but no doctor ever came. Then still bleeding and
16 in severe pain and sobbing uncontrollably I was wrapped in
17 gauze, stripped naked and thrown into a freezing suicide cell.
18 Two days later my bandages were removed and I was then
19 unceremoniously thrown into the hole. I simply couldn't
20 believe it.
21 I remained in the hole for the duration of my trial
22 and until the visible injuries to my chest, arms and legs had
23 faded away. A scar above my left ear serves as a permanent
24 reminder. Your Honor, I wasn't attacked because I was a short
25 seller, I wasn't attacked because part of my business was to
1 help shorts. I was attacked because this man thought that I
2 was a rich terrorist and I had to pay for it one way or
3 another.
4 Prison officials charged him with a 101 violation
5 which is an assault resulting in severe bodily injury and
6 attempted murder, a 104 which is a possession of a lethal
7 weapon, and a 204 which is a violent extortion. The only
8 violation more serious is a 100 which is murder. Three months
9 later after completing the investigation the warden, Mr. Zenk
10 himself, wrote to me, he advised me that he had recommended to
11 the government that my attacker should be indicted and charged
12 criminally. Inexplicably, the government, the FBI did
13 nothing. The unprovoked and vicious hate crime has not been
14 punished, yet the pain and trauma for me hasn't faded, it is
15 still there and very permanent.
16 Your Honor, I worked with thousands of people
17 watching me from 1998 to the day of my arrest, to the day of
18 my arrest in May of 2002. I dealt with hundreds of people
19 each day on the AP site and I loved every minute. I thrived
20 on the digging, the teaching and most of all above all else I
21 loved really believing that I was making a difference.
22 However, there is no stock, no scam, no promoter, no amount of
23 money, no publicity, glory, nothing, that is worth missing a
24 single day of being there for my kids.
25 I cannot tell the Court, my family or my friends how
1 deeply I regret all that has happened. I wish I had done so
2 many things differently. My suffering pales in comparison to
3 that of my children, my parents, my wife and our family and
4 friends some of whom have remained at my side despite all odds
5 and are present here in court today. I am heartened and
6 overwhelmed by the presence of so many who have traveled great
7 distances over the country and the world, again, to show their
8 love and support for me and my family.
9 For almost three years my wife, Faith, has flown
10 6,000 miles back and forth to New York by selling things and
11 borrowing money just so she could hold my hand, give me a hug,
12 talk to me for an hour or so. I chose to face my demons,
13 confess my sins, begged to be forgiven and then undeservedly
14 was. I never knew how amazingly blessed, I never knew how
15 amazingly blessed I was until I lost that trial. I have
16 fallen in love with my wife all over again. And I made a deal
17 with my maker, I promised him that I would make the next
18 15 years for her as happy as the last 15 years should have
19 been.
20 Each of our children is a testament to our value as
21 a family and my worth as their dad. Each is unique in their
22 own special way but they all need what I need, to be together
23 again. Together we make each other better, apart we are
24 diminished and broken. I have not had a cent of income for
25 the past four years costing me and my family millions of
1 dollars. We have been forced to drain and bleed away almost
2 another five million adding up to millions upon millions of
3 fairly and honestly earned dollars. This money represented
4 every single dime that my wife and I earned and saved over my
5 18 years on Wall Street but the funny thing is I don't miss
6 all that money or cash, I don't miss the fancy cars, I don't
7 miss watching myself on TV and I don't miss lobster or steak.
8 I simply don't miss any of these things. I do, however, miss
9 our home, a house we built to be our final home, a place where
10 we had planned to grow old together, a place where we wanted
11 to watch our kids and our sons become young men with families
12 and careers of their very own. I am unable to relieve the
13 grief and the crushing burden from the government that my
14 mother who has been the rock from which we all cling has had
15 to endure simply because she loves, supports and believes in
16 her son.
17 Two years ago I missed my brother's wedding and just
18 days ago the birth of their first child, Mary, in Jerusalem,
19 that's why he's not here today. My sister Mona has also had a
20 baby that I have never seen. I have missed the grand opening
21 of our dear friend Hassan and Drita's business here in America
22 and the achievements of their children. I missed my 20-year
23 high school reunion. I have missed my uncles and aunts and
24 their love and company. I have missed all my cousins who are
25 all more like brothers and sisters. I have missed my son
1 Gabriel's little league games and karate matches. I have
2 missed my son Adam's first year in high school when I know he
3 needed me so much. There are so many things that a boy
4 becoming a young man cannot discuss with his mother. I have
5 missed Sammy's plays, his singing at school. I have missed
6 swimming with Adam and Gabriel and I still need to teach Sammy
7 how. I have missed my mornings with Sammy, reading him
8 bedtime stories. It is so very hard to believe that I have
9 missed half of his life. I missed birthdays, playing games,
10 science projects, report cards, hugs, kisses and hearing them
11 all play.
12 A few weeks ago a couple of old site members chipped
13 in and bought plane tickets for my children to come visit me,
14 I hadn't seen them in six months, the last time was on my
15 birthday last November. My son Adam now is taller than I am,
16 not hard but, I walked right by Gabriel unable to recognize
17 him and my baby boy Sammy has doubled in size. It was simply
18 heart breaking to see with my own eyes proof of how much of
19 their lives I was missing and am missing. It is equally
20 unbearable to think of missing even more of their young lives
21 when they will only need me more and more.
22 I miss watching movies with my wife. I miss our
23 weekend getaways together. I miss hearing her sing. I miss
24 making her laugh and have forgotten how to myself. I miss
25 being able to speak without saying a word. I am not there to
1 comfort or protect her and I wake and sleep alone. I quite
2 simply miss her beyond words, Your Honor. These, Your Honor,
3 are my true and real losses. These are the only things that I
4 really and truly care about.
5 If one of my children should go astray, if one of
6 them is lost or if my marriage should fall apart, then I have
7 lost everything truly but if I can save my kids, help and
8 guide them, if I can be there for my wife and I can keep our
9 family together, then I'm still rich, truly rich. I have been
10 gone a very long, long time from everyone who I love and
11 everyone who ever depended on me. I am tired of watching
12 grown men as they watch other grown men as they watch TV. I
13 am so very tired of being completely useless to everyone.
14 I believe and I optimistically submit that the
15 evidence you've seen, Your Honor, and heard shows that it
16 wasn't greed or money that motivated me. I did what I did
17 because to me there was nothing more exciting and thrilling,
18 nothing was more satisfying than being right, nothing was more
19 honorable and nothing was more validating than when the SEC
20 agreed with me.
21 Consider the words of Jonathan Daws himself and his
22 members in RC chat when they discussed me being their
23 lightning rod and giving me all the heat and wanting the money
24 more than the glory or publicity for themselves. Then
25 consider the words of Mr. Levine during summation when he told
1 the jury that all the man does is try to cooperate. And then
2 consider the words of Mr. Nathanson himself who said the fact
3 is Mr. Elgindy's desire is to be part of the government, part
4 of the team that comes through.
5 Your Honor, it wasn't money or greed that excited
6 me, it was feeling good about who I had become and what I do.
7 I could stand here and tell Your Honor that never again will I
8 ever expose another stock scam, I can promise to never
9 befriend anyone in the government and be more than thrilled to
10 do so and I can guarantee that I will never call anyone or
11 bother anyone at the SEC or FBI ever again. I submit those
12 statements don't sound just quite right. However, what I can
13 tell Your Honor is this, my mistakes and errors will never be
14 repeated again ever. My family has already suffered mightily
15 and I implore Your Honor to please, please consider that my
16 children will forever be known as the children of a terrorist
17 and my wife as the wife of a terrorist.
18 I respectfully request that Your Honor please
19 consider the permanent damage that I have suffered as a result
20 of unjust innuendo and the resulting aftermath. I humbly
21 submit that I have already been severely punished in a
22 multitude of different ways, ways that aren't accounted for
23 within the guidelines, ways that were never contemplated by
24 Congress or the Sentencing Commission, punishment I'm afraid
25 that will haunt my family and I forever.
1 I am not a terrorist and I shouldn't have to say it.
2 Neither is anyone in my family, yet, they've been abused.
3 None of us support terrorism and I have never given a cent to
4 any cause that does. However, I am a father, a husband, a
5 son, a brother. I'm an American who wrestled, played
6 football, graduated an Illinois State Scholar. I married the
7 daughter of a Baptist minister named Faith whose two sisters
8 really are named Hope and Charity. I am a man who immigrated
9 to America as a baby, grew up fulfilling the American dream.
10 On the day of my arrest I was a trader, a good
11 trader who ran a chat room. On my site I disclosed who
12 Mr. Royer was and what he said to anyone who asked. I didn't
13 hide him because he wasn't a secret to me. When Mr. Royer
14 gave me FBI pencils I reported it. When he gave me an FBI
15 shirt I reported it. When he told me about the three FBI and
16 SEC investigations into Seaview that I started I reported it
17 and I reported it almost verbatim.
18 The fact is, Your Honor, I was proud of it. Any
19 time I was ever asked about information that could have
20 come -- information that came from him I could have lied but I
21 didn't and I always reported not only the substance of the
22 information he gave me but also instructions I was given. Did
23 I at times act as if I was special, someone special to have
24 such contacts or to know such things, yes, I certainly did,
25 there's no denying that I was quite proud and full of myself
1 but it wasn't done with a nefarious heart. Nevertheless, I
2 also recognize, Your Honor, that I am not without some
3 responsibility for what occurred, although certainly in my
4 opinion, my humble opinion that responsibility did not rise to
5 the level of criminal conduct. Rather, my responsibility,
6 Your Honor, is in terms of judgment and for that I am
7 profoundly contrite.
8 I failed to appreciate the danger and inadvisability
9 of establishing a relationship with Mr. Royer, regardless of
10 my benign intent, motivation and knowledge. My hard driving
11 methods and the war-like atmosphere in the market place in
12 which I saw myself as a protector of the average investor who
13 was preyed upon by scam artists peddling worthless stock
14 blinded me to the potential jeopardy of such a collaboration.
15 As Your Honor noted, I did not need Mr. Royer in
16 order to succeed. My lapse in judgment in that regard not
17 only exposed me to this prosecution but has also deprived
18 those who I love and those who I have striven to help in the
19 marketplace. For that as well I am extremely remorseful.
20 As Your Honor knows, two years ago my dear friend
21 Scott Helveston, a former Navy Seal, world champion
22 pentathlete and all American patriot was killed in Fallujah,
23 Iraq. Fourteen days later my family joined his to honor his
24 life. My wife and our kids watched through teary eyes as his
25 two young children grieved and struggled to cope with the loss
1 of their dad, with the loss of a man larger than life.
2 I can't help but compare some of the differences
3 between Scott's children and my own. Their memories are
4 sweet, they are comforted with the endless love and deep pride
5 of a fallen hero, while my children who have also faced life
6 without their father have done so in shame. Having been
7 diminished in their eyes has been a crushing weight, an
8 unbearable agony that I pay for every night in tears.
9 I realize I may never be a famous trader or a famous
10 anything ever again but that's okay. All I seek is the chance
11 to begin doing all the things I need to do in order to be like
12 Scott, in order to become my children's hero once again. Each
13 morning I wake, I think of my wife and kids who will be waking
14 up in hours to come, the separation is like a breath I can't
15 catch. Each night I sleep in a place that can ruin a
16 perfectly good man, a place brimming with men who grew up
17 never knowing their father, men who then learned to not care
18 for their own. I need to make certain that my kids never have
19 to see what I have seen, never experience what I have felt and
20 never stray from their own path in life. I'm a good father
21 and my kids need that.
22 I have always believed firmly that as long as people
23 continue to lie, cheat and steal on Wall Street that I'd have
24 a job. I thought my purpose was to expose the underbelly of
25 the market and the untenable conflicts of the NASD. However,
1 I'm done, I quit, I'm not interested in chasing any more bad
2 guys. I have learned what I am made of and I have learned my
3 capacity for pain and my capacity for change. I have learned
4 my true purpose. My purpose is right here in court, my
5 purpose is to raise three scared, kind and intelligent boys
6 into responsible and law abiding young men. My purpose is to
7 cherish, honor and forever be true to my wife Faith, the
8 sweetest, kindest, most beautiful and deserving human being
9 I've ever encountered in all my life. I used to have
10 unlimited access to the one person I have met in my life who I
11 automatically felt was out of my league and now for the first
12 time ever I realize that my marriage was the single greatest
13 accomplishment of my life. All these years I relied on wealth
14 as the glue to hold my life together. I used it to fill in
15 the cracks of who I said I was. She has given me one chance,
16 I've got the one chance, I've got one opportunity to finally
17 get it right and save my soul.
18 There is nothing on this planet, Your Honor, there
19 is nothing on this planet that I want more than this, there is
20 nothing more important to me than for her to finally and truly
21 be happy. I've got one critical and very fragile job. If
22 Your Honor will allow it, I can do this. I can do this, I can
23 do it. These three boys and their mother who is here today
24 are my only purpose. They are the beginning and end of my
25 world. I love them more than life itself.
1 I respectfully submit that no human being is all bad
2 nor all good. I have learned many lessons from this tragedy,
3 Your Honor, that have and will continue to make me a better
4 man, a better father and a much better husband. As I stand
5 here, Your Honor, the fact that I've already lost everything I
6 worked for and I've already been gone from my family for so
7 long is only tempered by the horrific contemplation of
8 possibly even more time away from them. The reality that it
9 was my work which was to seek, expose and then report fraud in
10 the market is what landed me here today is the most agonizing
11 of all. To try to come to grips with I have never been more
12 saddened by anything than being here and staring at the grim
13 possibility of even more time in prison, I simply don't know
14 where to begin to try and get my arms around what's happened.
15 When I walked into court earlier today, Your Honor,
16 I wanted to run into my family's arms. I want somebody to
17 wake me up, someone to tell me that it's all been a horrible
18 mistake.
19 I humbly, respectfully ask Your Honor to please have
20 compassion and mercy on me and my family. My children need
21 me, my wife needs me, my entire family is behind me. I humbly
22 beg Your Honor to please, please allow me to take my wife
23 home, please allow me to go home to our boys in answer to
24 their prayers yesterday on Father's Day, please allow me to be
25 there for them before they all grow up. Please give us the
1 chance to begin again and I promise, I solemnly swear that
2 I'll never let go of any of them ever again. This is who I
3 am. I can do this, it is within me now. And now, Your Honor,
4 it is up to you.
5 So, I will end by asking that you please, please,
6 please consider what the other traders will be getting and
7 then consider that at the bottom of each row of numbers
8 between every line of chat and before every dollar was earned
9 an irrefutable fact that no matter how loud the allegations
10 and no matter how the evidence is arranged or rearranged and
11 no matter how much the prosecution wants it not to be so,
12 nothing, nothing can change the absolute truth that I was a
13 trader who fiercely believed from my core to the tips of each
14 fiber of my being that I was doing the right thing. Thank
15 you, Your Honor.
16 THE COURT: All right. We'll take a very short
17 recess.
18 (Recess taken.) |
