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Ronald Weiland realized he’d made a bad bet in 2008, when he lost his $1 million nest egg trading shares of drug company Elan. What he didn’t know then was that the cards were stacked against him.
Weiland now believes that he and other investors were played by Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors when the hedge fund giant — acting on information from a former trader accused of insider trading — abruptly dumped its huge long position in Elan and Wyeth and started shorting both stocks.
“They had information that I didn’t have access to,” said Weiland, a 53-year-old former consultant for Arthur Andersen. “It’s totally a matter of seeing very wealthy people being able to game the system.”
The big trading swing that netted $276 million for SAC and led to the arrest of former trader Mathew Martoma has also landed the firm in hot water. Elan investors have filed at least two lawsuits against SAC, accusing the firm of costing them millions, and several class-action law firms are looking to tee up more.
The suits are part of the growing trend of shareholders seeking damages for being on the opposite end of a bad trade, in particular those involving allegations of insider trading.
“People’s realization that restitution is available [for insider trading cases] is rising,” said Pablo Quinones, a former prosecutor now with Reed Smith in New York.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent a so-called Wells notice to SAC, warning the firm that it faces civil charges tied to the trade. A spokesman for SAC and Cohen has said they acted appropriately in connection with the trades.
In 2011, former FrontPoint manager Chip Skowron was ordered to pay millions of dollars to five investors for selling them stock that he later admitted he knew was poised to plunge, including $2.4 million to Deutsche Bank and $877,000 to T. Rowe Price.
Skowron pleaded guilty to helping his former firm avoid $30 million in losses on Human Genome Sciences thanks to a tip he gleaned from a doctor overseeing a clinical drug trial.
The accusations against Martoma are similar. Prosecutors say he was tipped by a doctor overseeing clinical trials for an Alzheimer’s drug that Elan and Wyeth were developing.
The doctor, Sidney Gilman, allegedly told Martoma that the trial had hit a brick wall ahead of a presentation about the results. In the week leading up to the presentation, SAC dumped its Elan and Wyeth shares and shorted the two stocks, prosecutors said. SAC sold as much as $500 million Elan shares, representing more than 20 percent of the stock’s trading volume.
Weiland upped his Elan stake the same week that SAC was dumping the stock, he said.
Weiland, who lives in Concord, Calif., said the financial blow forced him to rejoin the work force.
“I had to reinvent my career again,” he said. “When I lost that working capital, which was pretty much my life’s savings, I had to move back to California to work for my father’s business.”