(Bloomberg) — The Apple Inc. lawyer who was once responsible for enforcing the company’s insider trading policy pleaded guilty to illegally trading for years on confidential revenue and earnings filings.
Gene Levoff, Apple’s former director of corporate law, on Thursday admitted he regularly traded on inside information between 2011 and 2016. Levoff, 48, of San Carlos, California, pleaded guilty to six counts of securities fraud in a videoconference before US District Judge William J. Martini in Newark, New Jersey. He was initially charged in February 2019.
The Stanford Law School graduate, who joined Apple in 2008, is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 10. The securities fraud counts to which Levoff pleaded guilty each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, though he is unlikely to get that much time.
“Gene Levoff betrayed the trust of one of the world’s largest tech companies for his own financial gain,” New Jersey US Attorney Vikas Khanna said in a statement. “Despite being responsible for enforcing Apple’s own ban on insider trading, Levoff used his position of trust to commit insider trading in order to line his own pockets.”
Levoff’s lawyer, Kevin Marino, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Draft SEC Filings
Prosecutors said Levoff was co-chairman of Apple’s disclosure committee, which allowed him to see draft filings before they were released to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He used the information to make $227,000 in profit and and to avoid losses of $377,000, according to the government.
Levoff on several occasions made trades within quarterly blackout periods, even after telling others employees that they were prohibited from trading in Apple stock, according to prosecutors.
Apple fired Levoff in September 2018 after placing him on leave two months earlier, according to a filing in a related lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Over his decade-long career at Apple, he was one of the most senior legal executives, reporting directly to the company’s general counsel.
The case is US v. Levoff, 19-cr-00780, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Newark).
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
