SDNY COURTHOUSE, April 16 – Sebastian Pinto-Thomaz was barely 30 years old but was publicly traded paint company Sherwin Williams' main contact at S&P when it moved to acquire Valstar in 2016. Mysteriously both a hairdresser and a jeweler linked to Sebastian and to his month Nathalie Pinto-Thomaz made large purchases of Valspar stock and options and fell under suspicious by FINRA.
On April 16 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York courtroom of Judge Jed Rakoff the trial of Sebastian Pinto-Thomaz on four felony counts began with opening statements. The prosecution described Sebastian tipping off hairdresser Abell Oujaddou before the 20 March 2016 announcement of hte deal, then collecting $7,500 in cash from his in a Home Depot in Manhattan - in the paint aisle.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine I. Magdo made sure the jury considered that irony, as well as joking that this hairdresser got his biggest tip ever from a client.
But Sebastian Pinto-Thomaz' lead attorney Henry Mazurek in his opening said it was the mother, Nathalie Pinto-Thomaz, a jewelry trader, who had done the tipping. The son blames it on the mother, with the father described as in Brazil. Career not destroyed, Sebastian Pinto-Thomaz asked the court this year to travel to Houston for a possible new job. But for two week he's set to be in Judge Rakoff's courtroom - and after that, nobody knows. Watch this site.
