Martoma starts serving 9-year sentence for insider trading

Mathew Martoma has started his nine-year prison term for insider trading at a "low security" federal prison in Miami at a time that most of the former hedge fund traders and analysts also convicted in the federal government's long-running investigation have paid their debt to society.

Martoma, 40, reported on Thursday to the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami and is scheduled to be released on September 20, 2022. Martoma, the married father of three young children, is appealing his conviction. The trial judge had directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to send him to the minimum-security "camp" section of the prison.

Earlier this year, a jury convicted Martoma on charges that he used inside information to generate profits and avoid losses totalling $275 million while working for Steven A Cohen's hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors. Martoma is one of more than 85 people who have either pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial in the federal government's crackdown on insider trading in the hedge fund industry.

Yet just a handful of the more than two dozen hedge fund analysts and traders sentenced to serve time in prison remain in federal custody. One reason is that many of the initial arrests and guilty pleas came in 2009. Most of those who got prison time were sentenced, on average, to less than two-year terms. Many more got little or no jail time for cooperating with the investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

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