United States v. Elgindy, No. 06-4081-cr (2d Cir. December 17, 2008) (Sack, Katzmann, CJJ, Rakoff, DJ)
Defendants Elgindy and Royer were convicted of securities fraud-based racketeering counts, as well as related extortion charges relating to a complex stock manipulation scheme. On appeal they challenged, inter alia, venue and the district court’s jury instructions on the securities fraud counts. The circuit affirmed.
The Scheme
In 1998, Elgindy started Pacific Equity, a company that provided information for stock investors. It had a publicly available website that published negative information about publicly traded stocks, while a subscriber-only site profited from this information by advising its subscribers to short-sell those same stocks. In 2000, Elgindy began receiving misappropriated negative law enforcement information about certain stocks from Royer, who was then an FBI agent. Elgindy would pass on this information to his subscribers and instruct them to short the stock before he made the information …