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Prosecutors Make $560K in Trading Profits Go 'Poof'

July 15, 2011
It took just 1 month for 2 hedge fund managers to allegedly make $560,000 in trading profits;  it took the U.S. investigators 20 months to disgorge them of their booty. Walter Shimoon, an expert consultant with Primary Global, pled guilty on Wednesday to charges of tipping hedge fund traders with insider information about Apple's plans for the iPad and iPhone 4.  The details about the tips Shimoon gave hedge fund clients are in a complaint embedded below, courtesy of Business Insider.  Through a Flextronics employee (Flextronics supplied Apple's cameras), Shimoon knew secrets like what Apple's code word "K48" meant -- big bucks for his hedge fund clients, who would pay him for any information that might tell them how to trade Apple stock. He didn't know "K48" meant "iPad," yet, but he knew that project "K48" was so secret that anyone at Apple would get fired for saying the word outside of a meeting about K48. Gains of $560K.   One of Shimoon's hedge fund clients, Kingdom Ridge Capital, a hedge fund founded by former SAC Capital employees Christopher Zepf (worked at SAC from 2002-2007 as a tech portfolio manager) and Brian Thonn (worked as an equity analyst) located in White Plains, New York, allegedly made $560,000 trading Shimoon's secrets in just one month, October 2009. The tips were amazing:
  • Sales figures for Apple iPhone for the 3rd quarter of 2009.
  • Forecast sales for for Apple iPhone sales in the 4th quarter of 2009.
  • Forecast sales figures for iPod sales in the 4th quarter of 2009.
  • Sales forecast info for iPhone 4.
  • Information that iPhone 4 would have 2 cameras and video conferencing technology.
The taped telephone calls in the complaint were intriguing: