A former Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond official was sentenced Tuesday to 24 months in prison for misappropriating inside information from the Federal Reserve to engage in insider trading.
The defendant, Robert Brian Thompson, 43, of Moseley, worked as a bank examiner and senior manager with supervisory duties for the Federal Reserve, which gave him access to confidential information about financial institutions under the Federal Reserve's supervision, including confidential supervisory information.
According to the Department of Justice , Thompson used confidential workplace information to execute 69 trades at seven different publicly traded financial institutions totaling $771,678 from October 2020 through February 2024.
To conceal the scheme, Thompson lied on his "Form D," which, among other things, requires employees to disclose whether they have any assets, including any stock ownership in any bank that is a member of the Federal Reserve System.
"Thompson falsely stated on the FRBR Form D that he had no assets," the Justice Department stated last November in a press release.
Thompson pleaded guilty to one count of insider trading and one count of documentary misrepresentation. He faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the insider trading charge, as well as five years in prison on the document fraud charge.
Prior to Thompson's sentencing on Tuesday, the Justice Department asked Judge M. Hannah Lauck to give him a sentence of 30 to 37 months.
The Federal Reserve also filed a "victim impact statement," requesting an "appropriate" sentence.
"Mr. Thompson's actions violated our well-established and well-communicated policies, as well as the public trust. This deception provided him with personal financial gain at the expense of our integrity," Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin stated in a letter to Judge Lauck last Thursday.
The Bank's reputation was tarnished because of your deliberate disregard for our policies, false statements, and misrepresentation of your actions. For these reasons, we hope you will consider an appropriate sentence for Mr. Thompson's betrayal of our mission and the American people, the central banker added.
For his part, Thompson successfully moved for a reduced sentence. Judge Lauck granted Thompson's motion during the sentencing hearing following arguments on Tuesday. The transcript of the arguments is not yet publicly available, so it is unclear how the former federal official managed to convince the judge to reduce his sentence.
Ken Silva, Money Metals