By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC - Honduras - CIA Trial Book - NY Mag
SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 29 – Seth Markin was the subject of an insider trading press conference on July 25, 2022. Then for his presentment he got a taxpayer-funded lawyer, declaring himself eligible in a still-sealed CJA 23 financial affidavit.
On July 25, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Magistrate Sarah Netburn approved and sealed his Criminal Justice Act 23 affidavit. Inner City Press has previously gotten unsealed the CJA 23's of Michael Avenatti, and Honduras alleged narco trafficker Tigre Bonilla. But others' keep getting sealed.
Markin is free on a $200,000 bond, with a taxpayer funded lawyer. The prosecutors said:
What kind of insider trader big enough for an SDNY press conference is, on the same day, declared eligible for publicly-paid counsel?
In early 2021, SETH MARKIN and BRANDON WONG together made more than $1.4 million dollars in illegal profits by trading in stock based on inside information that MARKIN misappropriated from his then-girlfriend, who was then an attorney at a major law firm in Washington D.C. assigned to work on the acquisition of Pandion Therapeutics (“Pandion”) by Merck & Co. (“Merck”). To carry out the illegal insider trading scheme, MARKIN secretly looked through his girlfriend’s confidential work documents, without her permission, and learned that in a matter of weeks, Merck, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, was going to acquire Pandion, a publicly traded biotechnology company, for approximately three times the value of Pandion’s then-share price. After misappropriating this material non-public information from his girlfriend, MARKIN purchased shares in Pandion, and tipped several friends and family members, including WONG. WONG, in turn, purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Pandion shares, and told at least eight other people to purchase Pandion shares. In total, MARKIN and WONG directly or indirectly caused more than twenty people to trade in Pandion stock based on the material non-public information that MARKIN misappropriated from his girlfriend resulting in millions of dollars of illegally obtained trading profits. At the time of the relevant trades, MARKIN had been accepted into the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a new agent trainee. In addition to perpetrating the insider trading scheme, MARKIN lied to conceal his illegal Pandion trades. In or about June 2021, after MARKIN and his girlfriend had ended their relationship, and as MARKIN was preparing to begin training as a new agent at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, MARKIN’s former girlfriend called him to ask why MARKIN’s name had come up in an inquiry by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) into trading in Pandion stock. In response, MARKIN lied to her and falsely claimed that he did not trade in Pandion stock. In addition, in or about November 2021, MARKIN lied to FBI agents when he was interviewed about his Pandion trading, conduct that forms the basis for a separate charge against MARKIN for making false statements. MARKIN, 31, of Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, has been charged with nine counts of securities fraud and eight counts of tender offer fraud, each of which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison, and one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements, each of which carries a maximum term of 5 years in prison, and was arrested this morning. WONG, 38, of New York, has been charged with eleven counts of securities fraud and ten counts of tender offer fraud, each of which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison, and one count of conspiracy, which carries a maximum term of 5 years in prison and was arrested this morning. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos
The case is US v. Markin, et al., 22-cr-395 (Ramos / Netburn)
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