warmhandluke

That happened in Malta, he said they are based in the US.

I don't care who it was, you were under the impression that he was a prospective client and acting as such. Just because other companies do the same stuff and get away with it doesn't make you an innocent victim.

This guy was a sales manager for an Expert Network company. Expert Network companies' function is to connect employees of large publicly traded companies with investors, mainly hedge funds. These investors pay very large sums of money to meet with company insiders. They claim that these meetings are not for the purpose of sharing inside information, but we have seen numerous prior examples showing that that's exactly what was going on. Hedge fund managers aren't paying shitloads of money to sit down and have coffee, they are looking for a return on their investment. I have a very hard time believing that Mr. Fleishman was completely unaware of what was going on at his firm. Here's an excerpt from a recorded conversation between he and a prospective client:

“You’re accessing our networking of contacts to get information from them, you know kind of to prove or disprove your model,” Fleishman can be heard saying on the call. “Talking to them, uh, so they can be a resources for you.”

Primary Global, based in Mountain View, California, links investors with industry experts at public companies. In his position as a sales manager, Fleishman was responsible for attracting new clients and arranging for fund managers to speak to consultants, the U.S. said.

Motey asked Fleishman if he could get specific information about technology companies, not just industry trends.

‘It Depends’

“It depends who you’re talking to,” Fleishman said. “In Taiwan, who are seeing stuff on a day-to-day basis that can say ‘Hey, here’s how things are kind of shaping up for June.’”

Motey told jurors he was surprised by Fleishman’s statement because late May or early June is a period just before companies issue quarterly earnings.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Leibowitz asked Motey what he understood Fleishman to be saying.

“I took it to mean that they had people who’d be able to give me daily updates on a particular company, even on a day-to- day basis,” Motey said.

Fleishman also said consultants last names weren’t given out to clients or their contact information.

“You just try to provide anonymity to some degree for the experts,” Fleishman said.

“That’s just to protect them from investor relations?” Motey said.

‘Us and Them’

“Yeah, because the relationship we have is between us and them,” Fleishman replied.

Leibowitz asked Motey what he understood Fleishman to mean.

“What I meant was in my experience, investor relations keeps a very tight control over who gets to talk and what message gets out,” he said. “Investor relations would not want employees to be talking to investors.”

If he really didn't know shady stuff was going on then he would have to be incredibly stupid, and I don't think that's the case. I'm not seeing enough skepticism in this thread.