NEW YORK — Drew Peterson, the son of former Arthur Andersen managing partner H. Clayton Peterson, was sentenced Wednesday to three years probation by a federal judge for his role in his father’s insider-trading scheme.
Drew Peterson, 35, was also ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Patterson Jr. in New York City to serve 200 hours of community service and pay a $10,000 fine for trading on a tip provided by his father about an impending merger.
Drew Peterson is the last to be sentenced in the case that also hooked Drew “Bo” Brownstein, the son of well-known Denver attorney and political lobbyist Norman Brownstein.
Drew Peterson’s attorney, Kevin McGreevy, offered no comment after the sentencing.
Federal prosecutors said the younger Peterson was required to forefeit $205,416 as part of his sentence, presumably the profits culled from trading on his father’s stock tip.
The tip was about a pending merger of Mariner Energy with Apache Corp. and H. Clayton Peterson pressured his son to trade on the information in April 2010. The senior Peterson was on the Mariner board and had overseen Andersen’s Denver office in the 1990s.
Drew Peterson was an investment adviser who then bought 2,000 shares in Mariner, much of it on accoutns for himself, his sister, Carrie, and an investment club in which he was a member.
H. Clayton Peterson, 65, received a two-year probation term in October, the first three months to be served in home confinement. He was also ordered to pay a $400,000 fine.
In January, Brownstein was sentenced to 366 days in prison and ordered to forfeit $2.44 million he made from trading on the same tip.
Drew Peterson passed along details of the merger to Brownstein, a long-time friend, a hedge-fund manager who turned it into a windfall for his firm, Big 5 Asset Management.
Personally, Brownstein pocketed about $130,000, prosecutors have said.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com, Twitter/DavidMigoya, Facebook/david.migoya
