Brokerage Employee Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading Conspiracy

As one of Wall Street's most far-reaching cases of insider trading continues to unravel, a former employee of Hoboken, NJ-based brokerage firm Assent has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, after admitting he accepted bribes to conceal illegal trades based on inside information provided by a former employee at UBS.Laurence McKeever, a former compliance officer at Assent, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy before the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 1.

Since March 2007, prosecutors have brought criminal charges against 13 people who were part of what has been called one of the biggest insider trading rings on Wall Street since the 1980s.

The ring netted more than $15m in profits and included a Morgan Stanley compliance lawyer, a Bear Stearns stockbroker, three hedge funds and a day-trading firm.

Regulators and banks have increasingly been using technology to catch rogue traders.

Earlier this year, the UK's FSA announced its use of Progress Apama Event Processing Platform to monitor transactions and detect insider trading and other market abuses as they occur.

The platform streams data, and detects complex patterns among seemingly unrelated events.As one of Wall Street's most far-reaching cases of insider trading continues to unravel, a former employee of Hoboken, NJ-based brokerage firm Assent has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, after admitting he accepted bribes to conceal illegal trades based on inside information provided by a former employee at UBS... Melanie Rodier has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for over 10 years, covering business and finance, general news, and film trade news. Prior to joining Wall Street & Technology in April 2007, Melanie lived in Paris, where she worked for the International Herald ... View Full Bio