Move over, Preet Bharara.
Loretta Lynch, Uncle Sam’s top crime-fighter across the river in Brooklyn, appears to be getting into the insider-trading investigation game with a criminal probe of a Long Island broker, The Post has learned.
In her cross hairs is Tibor Klein, a 39-year-old broker who allegedly got an insider tip on the takeover of King Pharmaceuticals in the fall of 2010.
Klein used the alleged tip to pocket all of $8,824 in profits, The Post reported last September.
On Tuesday, a Florida district court judge granted the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office request to halt a civil case against Klein so it can pursue a criminal investigation into the same matter.
Bharara, the Manhattan US Attorney, owns a well-publicized string of 79 straight insider-trading case convictions.
Klein, who worked for Klein Financial Services, allegedly got the insider tip from a lawyer friend who knew about the pending merger.
Klein, it is alleged, then tipped off his longtime pal, Michael Shechtman, who made more than $100,000 on the deal, the SEC claims.
Klein’s firm made $319,550 from the tip, the SEC complaint said.
Klein’s lawyer friend, Robert Schulman, was allegedly drunk when he passed along the tip during a dinner in August 2010, blurting out, “It would be nice to be King for a day,” the complaint said.
Schulman worked for the Hunton and Williams law firm that represented King — which two months after the alleged tip agreed to be bought by Pfizer for $3.6 billion. Schulman has not been charged by the SEC.
On Dec. 20, Shechtman settled the charges with the SEC, neither admitting nor denying the allegations.