A former Walt Disney Co. administrative assistant was sentenced to four months home detention Tuesday after admitting to engaging in a scheme last year to sell early access to the entertainment company’s earnings.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan alleged that Bonnie Hoxie, the former assistant to Disney’s head of communications, gave her then-boyfriend Yonni Sebbag information about Disney’s results before their public announcement last spring.
Sebbag then contacted dozens of hedge funds and investment companies anonymously last March in an amateurish insider-trading plot, offering to provide an early glimpse of Disney’s results, prosecutors said.
“I trusted someone who I was not only romantically involved with, but also was a close confident of for over eight years,” Hoxie said Tuesday. “I was blindsided by love in not making the correct choices.”
At a hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered Hoxie to serve three years probation, the first four months of which would be on home detention. He didn’t impose a fine and ordered her to complete 100 hours of community service a year during her probation.
Hoxie and Sebbag separately pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and wire fraud. Sebbag was sentenced to 27 months in prison in January.
A form letter was sent last March to more than 30 investment companies, offering access to Disney’s earnings before their release last May and giving the companies a g-mail address, prosecutors said.
FBI agents then began corresponding with Sebbag by e-mail, posing as hedge-fund traders, prosecutors said. Sebbag agreed to share the inside information for $15,000 in cash, prosecutors said.
Sebbag was the “primary leader of this conspiracy,” Asst. U.S. Atty. Julian Moore said Tuesday.
Three days before the release of earnings, Sebbag allegedly e-mailed a copy of “speaking points” related to the company’s fiscal 2010 second-quarter earnings, prosecutors said.
Sebbag’s lawyer said at his sentencing last month that the scheme was born of desperation by Sebbag, who was in dire financial straits after a downturn in the economy and had a gambling addiction.
Robert Baum, Hoxie’s lawyer, said she agreed to provide the information to Sebbag so he might make an investment. She didn’t know the extent of his scheme, Baum said.
“What she did went far beyond the nature of the crime she was involved in,” Baum said.
On the day the earnings were released, Hoxie e-mailed Sebbag, saying “here is the bag that you are going to get for me,” according to a civil suit filed last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The e-mail included a link to a $700 Stella McCartney handbag, the SEC said.
Sebbag allegedly replied he would get her the bag “next week” and said, “I may be able to (buy) u 2 of them,” the SEC said. She replied with a link to Stella McCartney shoes, the SEC said.
Hoxie settled the SEC lawsuit in November without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
