A federal civil jury in Denver has sided with fallen oilman Roger Parker and his that he tipped buddies about a lucrative deal he was about to land with late-billionaire Kirk Kerkorian in 2007.
The 12-person U.S. District Court jury last week determined that although Parker told close friend and one-time insurance executive Michael Van Gilder about Kerkorian’s planned $684 million investment in Delta Petroleum, he did it innocently and without any plan to profit from it.
Additionally, the jury sided with Parker’s explanation that the information he passed along was merely business chatter among friends, not any devious effort to sidestep rules that would prevent him from personally profiting on Kerkorian’s investment.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s case hinged on immaterial gains Parker allegedly made in the form of luxury trips and personal loans from those who purportedly profited from the insider trades.
The verdict came three months after in the civil lawsuit. U.S. District Judge John Kane declared a mistrial and ordered a new one.
The SEC might have settled the case long ago except for yet agree to pay large sums of money to the government to forestall the expense of a protracted trial.
Parker’s attorneys could not be immediately reached, and the SEC declined to comment. It is unclear if the SEC will appeal the verdict.
The jury took about five hours to decide Parker had not personally profited from the insider information he gave Van Gilder, who had pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of illegal insider trading in connection with the case –
Parker had maintained that not he, for using details of the Kerkorian deal to buy and sell on Delta stock, which rose nearly 20 percent when the investment was announced.
Another Parker buddy, investment guru Scott Reiman, in which he returned nearly $900,000 in alleged profits from the Delta deal.
However, the jury decided Parker neither shared any insider info with Reiman about the Kerkorian buy-in, nor that Reiman profited from any trades on anything Parker allegedly had told him.
