Brian Jorgensen, a former senior manager at Microsoft, was sentenced to two years in prison last week for his role in an insider trading scheme reportedly worth more than $400,000. In 2012, Jorgensen — a corporate finance manager at the company — informed his friend Sean Stokke that Microsoft was set to invest $300 million into a strategic partnership with Barnes & Noble. Prosecutors say that the two men earned $184,000 from the illegal tip after the bookseller’s stock jumped 50 percent.
Stokke and Jorgensen had worked together at an asset management company before the latter took his job with Microsoft. According to Reuters, Stokke sent Jorgensen’s share of the profits in envelopes, each containing $10,000 in cash. The Barnes & Noble deal wasn’t the only example of insider trading the pair indulged in — they repeated the process two further times in an 18 month period, making a total of $414,000, before the plots were uncovered and Jorgensen was fired.
Stokke had been sentenced to between one and one and a half years in prison two weeks ago. The maximum penalty in the US for insider trading is 20 years. Speaking to Jorgensen about his two-year sentence, US District Judge Marsha Pechman said “it is important that you serve as a public example.”
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