Judge considers infant when sentencing parents

NEW YORK - A former Morgan Stanley financial analyst and her husband, an ex-hedge fund analyst at ING, were today sentenced to a year and half each for insider trading.

But in an unusual twist to the case, US District Judge Colleen McMahon sentenced Jennifer Xujia Wang and her husband, Ruopian Chen, to serve their sentences one after the other to allow for at least one of them to be with their infant son.

McMahon rejected a plea by one of the defence lawyers to not send Wang to jail so she could be with her son.

She said she would not let Chen "take the fall for both."

"Ms Wang, you are not less culpable. You are more culpable. You are the thief," McMahon told Wang who wept silently. "You have done this to your son."

McMahon sentenced them so that Wang would report to prison after Chen is released and their son has turned 2. She also ordered them to forfeit about US$611,000 ($810,129).

Wang and Chen, of Englishtown, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and insider trading charges in September.

They were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May and released on bail. Their son was born in New York in June.

Federal prosecutors accused them of trading based on material, nonpublic information that Wang obtained from Morgan Stanley, netting more than US$600,000 from the scheme.

- REUTERS

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