Business

‘Trading’ places

Todd Newman, the stock trader who helped take down hedge-fund firm Diamondback Capital Management with a multimillion dollar insider-trading scheme, was sentenced yesterday to 4 1/2 years in prison.

The feds had requested up to 6 1/2 years.

Newman, 48, also was fined $1 million and ordered to forfeit $737,724 for his crimes.

A federal court jury convicted the ex-highflying portfolio manager last December on five counts of fraud for his trades in Dell and Nvidia, which were aided by insider tips.

Around the time of his six-week trial, Diamondback announced plans to cease operations amid requests by investors that would have reduced the firm’s already depleted assets by 26 percent, to $1.45 billion.

When it was raided by the FBI in 2010, Diamondback boasted assets of more than $5 billion.

It managed to hang on with reduced assets for a few years after inking a non-prosecution agreement with Uncle Sam.

Federal agents also arrested Newman’s former analyst, Jesse Tortora, who pleaded guilty and testified against his former boss.

Dressed in a navy blue suit and slumped in a chair at the defense table inside Judge Richard Sullivan’s courtroom, Newman waived his right to address the court.

His lawyers pleaded on his behalf, saying the divorced father is a “fundamentally good” man, and that a prolonged incarceration would be detrimental to his 12-year old daughter.

“This is not who he is,” said one of the lawyers, John Nathanson. “He has lived a really unimpeachable, good life.”

Sullivan said letters from Newman’s friends and family moved him, but he said he could not reconcile the portrait of the person presented in the letters with the man convicted of illegal trading.

“It’s hard to square that with what actually went on here,” which was purely about “getting more money,” he said.