Emanuel Goffer, 32, brother of Zvi "Octopussy" Goffer, is the latest player in the Galleon insider trader ring to be sentenced to prison.  On Friday morning, Judge Richard Sullivan imposed a 3-year sentence - less that than the 4-5 year sentence suggested by federal guidelines.  Judge Sullivan also ordered Goffer to 3 years of supervised release after the prison term and ordered him to forfeit $761,000 in illicit profits. Brother Zvi, a former trader at the Galleon Group hedge fund who reputedly devised the scheme, was given 10 years in prison, last month.  Zvi bribed corporate lawyers for confidential information about corporate mergers.

“Emanuel Goffer went to extreme lengths to conceal his role in a tangled web of insider traders who have all been convicted for illegally trading on proprietary information about public companies.” -- Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that showed Mr. Goffer, who helped start the trading firm Incremental Capital, attempting to cover up illegal trades and used hard-to-trace prepaid mobile phones to facilitate the exchange of secret information. Unlike the vast majority of insider trading defendants who either cooperated with the government or pleaded guilty, the Goffers, along with another trader, Michael Kimelman, took their case to trial.  Mr.Kimelman co-founded Incremental Capital with the Goffers.  A jury convicted all 3 in June after a 2 week trial.  The lawyers, who worked at Ropes & Gray, had both pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Kimelman will be sentenced on Oct. 12., while Raj Rajaratnam, the head of Galleon, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 13.  Prosecutors have asked the court to sentence Mr. Rajaratnam, the centerpiece of the government’s investigation, to 19-to-24 years.   [DealBook, 10/7/11]