Michael Steinberg — the highest-ranking SAC Capital Advisors money manager to be charged with insider trading — is losing before his trial even begins on Monday.
On Thursday, his lawyers will make a last-ditch effort to convince Manhattan federal judge Judge Richard Sullivan to limit evidence from other insider-trading cases and exclude from prospective jurors the fact that Steinberg ever worked at SAC.
If the judge’s recent rulings are any indication, however, those pleas don’t stand much of a chance.
Sullivan denied a request this week to delay the trial by three months after Steinberg’s lawyers argued that all the negative publicity surrounding SAC’s recent plea deal with the government would prejudice jurors.
Earlier, Steinberg’s lawyers unsuccessfully argued for a change of venue from Manhattan.
SAC pleaded guilty to five counts of securities and wire fraud last week — just two weeks before Steinberg’s trial is set to start.
The timing was not coincidental: prosecutors had pressed SAC to agree to the record $1.8 billion penalty before the trial, threatening to raise the fine if SAC waited.
“Mr. Steinberg now faces jury selection on the heels of an extraordinarily prejudicial and plainly inadmissible development — SAC’s admission of guilt,” Steinberg’s lead lawyer, Barry Berke, wrote to the judge in asking for the postponement.
Berke berated the media’s “constant disparagement of SAC and its purportedly corrupt culture, the frequent association of Mr. Steinberg with other SAC personnel who have been convicted of our charged with insider trading; and the routine descriptions of Mr. Steinberg’s close relationship with Steven Cohen and prominence at SAC.”
But Sullivan was unmoved, saying that a delay won’t accomplish much.
“Even assuming that the public is forgetful enough to be affected by a three-month delay, there is a strong likelihood that this and related cases will still be in the news three months from now,” he said.
Another ex-SAC money manager, Mathew Martoma, goes on trial in January, while SAC will be sentenced in March.
Sullivan did say prospective jurors could be grilled individually if they have been exposed to the SAC publicity.
Steinberg, 41, faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of his insider trading in shares of Dell and Nvidia between 2007 and 2009.