Richard Choo-Beng Lee, who co-founded Spherix Capital and once was an analyst at SAC Capital, pled guilty in 2009 along with Spherix co-founder Ali Far, admitting to engaging in an insider trading scheme that enabled Spherix to make $5 million. Lee secretly informed on various individuals and recorded several phone calls with 28 people, including billionaire Steven A. Cohen, whose SAC Capital employed Lee as an analyst from 1999 to 2004, prosecutors said. Lee was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan to pay a $100,000 fine in light of his 2009 guilty plea.
Three weeks prison for key informant in U.S. insider-trading cases
Ali Far is a former employee at the Galleon Group. He left in 2008 to start his own Hedge fund (Spherix Capital Partners) with his Partner, Richard Choo-Beng Lee, aka “C.B.” Far was sentenced to one year of probation for his participation in multiple insider trading schemes during which he obtained, shared, and traded based on material, non-public information (“inside information”) stolen from several public companies. Far pled guilty in October 2009 to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of securities fraud pursuant to a cooperation agreement with the government. Together, he and his co-conspirator at Spherix gained approximately $5,209,464 for their hedge fund by placing trades in Spherix accounts based on Inside Information.