The Motley Crew of Bankers, Traders and Entrepreneurs Accused of Insider Trading

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. authorities last month announced arrests in a series of cases that alleged insider trading by a group of bankers, day traders and entrepreneurs who worked in a loosely organized network to reap millions in illicit profits by using confidential information. Other links between suspects in seemingly unrelated probes in the U.K. and France have also emerged.

Here’s a look at the people prosecutors in the three countries say are allegedly involved:

The U.S. Case

Bryan Cohen
Age: 33
Residence: New York
Job: Goldman Sachs  Group Inc. banker

Bryan Cohen was a Goldman Sachs investment banker in New York when he was arrested in his apartment before sunrise on Oct. 18. Cohen, a French citizen, started with the firm in London in 2010, then transferred to New York in 2017.

U.S. authorities claim Cohen passed to an unidentified trader in Switzerland tips on potential acquisitions involving Syngenta AG, a Swiss supplier of farm chemicals and seeds, and Buffalo Wild Wings Inc., a restaurant and sports bar franchise based in Minneapolis.

Cohen is free on $750,000 bond and is awaiting trial, confined to the apartment that he shares with his girlfriend. Goldman Sachs placed him on paid leave when he was arrested and charged. He has pleaded not guilty.

Benjamin Taylor
Age: 35
Residence: France
Former Job: Moelis & Co. banker

Darina Windsor
Age: 32
Residence: Thailand
Former Job: Centerview Partners LLC banker

Benjamin Taylor is a former Moelis banker who shared a London apartment with his girlfriend, former Centerview banker Darina Windsor.

Prosecutors claim that, from late 2012 to early 2018, the two passed inside information on 22 companies, sometimes communicating in code while using the pet names “Pops” and “Popsy” in emails. A 2012 email from Windsor to Taylor was titled “Once upon a time, there was a Pops searching for Truffles in the Forest...,” according to the indictment. Attached allegedly was confidential information about Amgen Inc.’s plan to buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Taylor left his bank around 2015 and Windsor was fired around 2016. But Taylor continued passing on inside information from an unidentified investment bank. The two got more than $1 million in cash, luxury watches and expensive clothes, according to the government.

Prosecutors unsealed the Sept. 9 indictment last month, saying the two are at large. Taylor is in France and Windsor is in her native Thailand, they said. Neither have responded to the accusations and efforts to contact them have been unsuccessful.

Joseph Abdul Noor El-Khouri
Age: 52
Residence: London
Job: Trader

London trader Joseph El-Khouri made $2 million on tips passed from Taylor and Windsor through an unidentified middleman, according to U.S. investigators. They said he and the middleman exchanged encrypted messages and communicated using “burner” phones that they destroyed and replaced regularly to avoid detection.

El-Khouri, who holds dual Lebanese-British citizenship, suffered two heart attacks in September and has “complex medical needs,” his lawyer told a judge after his arrest in London. He’s being held without bail in Wandsworth prison while fighting extradition to the U.S. His lawyer declined to comment further on the case. 

Georgios Nikas
Age: 54
Residence: New York, Greece
Job: Restaurateur

Georgios Nikas is a securities trader and owner of a chain of Greek restaurants, GRK Fresh Greek. Prosecutors claim he got tips that originated with Cohen, Taylor and Windsor, making millions of dollars from illegal trading in the shares of at least a dozen companies. Nikas owns a $6 million New York apartment, a prosecutor said in court.

Nikas also tried to keep investigators at bay through the use of burner phones, according to the government. On one occasion, Cohen allegedly picked up a phone from one of Nikas’s New York restaurants.

Nikas is charged with a separate scheme in which he allegedly got tips on Ariad Pharmaceuticals from Telemaque Lavidas, the son of an Ariad director.

Nikas isn’t in custody and has been in Greece for the past year, according to the government. He hasn’t responded to the charges.

Telemaque Lavidas
Age: 38
Residence: New York, Greece
Job: Lavipharm Laboratories Inc.

Telemaque Lavidas, a U.S. citizen living in New York with his pregnant wife and their 15-month-old child, is a 2003 graduate of Columbia University with a degree in economics. Prosecutors claim he got inside information about Ariad from his father, who sits on the board of a pharmaceutical company and lives in Athens, and passed it to Nikas. Lavidas was arrested in Nikas’s New York apartment on Oct. 18, and prosecutors said he was seen meeting a cousin of Nikas who they believe was distributing the burner phones the ring used to communicate.

Lavidas worked for his family’s company, Lavipharm Laboratories Inc., in New Jersey, according to his attorneys. He founded a startup, Mediterra, that makes nutrition bars “inspired by the Mediterranean diet.”

Lavidas has pleaded not guilty and was denied bail, causing more than a half-dozen family members attending his bail hearing to burst into tears. A U.S. prosecutor said he was concerned Lavidas would flee to Greece. He’s confined in a federal jail in Manhattan while he awaits trial in January. 

The U.K. Case

Walid Choucair
Age: 40
Residence: London
Job: Trader

Walid Choucair is a privately educated Londoner who started trading in a serious way in his mid-20s. In June, he was convicted on five counts of insider trading and sentenced to three years in prison. A jury found he had used confidential information from Fabiana Abdel-Malek, a friend at UBS Group AG, to profit from trades on five stocks between 2013 and 2014, including Targa Resources Corp. and Elizabeth Arden Inc. 

The judge said he corrupted Abdel-Malek, who was a family friend, by introducing her to the glamor of his Mayfair private members club, Tramp, where he spent thousands of pounds hosting champagne parties and had a regular gig playing guitar. 

Choucair said he made trading decisions based on what he learned publicly and from other traders, not from Abdel-Malek, and plans to appeal the verdict.

Fabiana Abdel-Malek
Age: 37
Residence: London
Former Job: UBS Group AG compliance officer

Fabiana Abdel-Malek went to high school near London’s tony Sloane Square, before studying to become a lawyer. She was accepted to UBS’s graduate program and had a promising career in the compliance department, with job offers from Goldman Sachs coming her way. As part of her role, she had access to confidential information relating to all the mergers and acquisitions UBS was working on.

In June, Abdel-Malek was convicted of five counts of insider trading and sentenced to three years in prison alongside her trader friend Choucair. When she was arrested, Abdel-Malek was still living with her parents and two adult sisters in West London.

Abdel-Malek and Choucair were initially introduced through their mothers, and Choucair started taking her to his private members club Tramp. Prosecutors said that on several occasions, she accessed confidential deals data, then contacted Choucair by burner phone shortly afterwards. Her burner SIM card was in a BlackBerry handset that was identical to her work phone, which prosecutors said was to conceal her wrongdoing. Abdel-Malek, who argued she hadn’t given any insider information to Choucair, hasn’t said whether she plans to appeal. 

The French Case

Alexis Kuperfis
Age: 39
Residence: Geneva
Role: Day trader

It's unclear when Alexis Kuperfis started trading, but one thing is sure, he became very good at it very fast. So good that he caught the attention of French authorities, who've been keeping a close eye on him ever since he made a 20 million-euro ($22.3 million) profit in 2014 on a bet ahead of news of General Electric Co.’s plan to buy part of Alstom SA.

Investigators began wiretapping his phone and raided a Paris flat just hours after he’d arrived. French authorities even shared with British investigators a tape of a conversation where Choucair warned Kuperfis about a probe.

Two years ago, a Paris investigative judge charged Kuperfis over suspicious trading ahead of chemical producer Air Liquide SA’s $10 billion takeover of U.S. rival Airgas Inc. French investigators say he made 4.4 million euros after getting an illegal tip-off before the deal was announced. No trial has been ordered and he denies the charges.

Before he became a successful day trader, Kuperfis appears to have begun working as an independent M&A adviser on small deals in Paris.

Lucien Selce 
Age: 56
Residence: Geneva
Role: Day trader

The first link between Lucien Selce and Kuperfis came two years ago in a privacy case when the men's lawyers argued at a French constitutional court hearing that investigators had overstepped their powers in requesting phone bill records to trace their clients' whereabouts.

While Selce had been charged over trades related to oilfield surveyor CGG SA, he made those transactions in Switzerland, not in the French Alps or Corsica, so investigators shouldn’t have access to phone records while he was vacationing there, his lawyer said at the time. Selce also faces separate insider-trading charges over Airgas gains but no trial has been ordered in either case. He denies the allegations.

Selce wasn't always a trader. He has more than 15 years of investment banking expertise, including work at Cargill Financial Markets Plc and consulting for a Barclays Plc unit, according to a profile on one of his companies' website.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Elser at celser@bloomberg.net, Tony AaronsDavid Glovin

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