Eugene Plotkin finally pleads guilty of insider trading

Former Goldman Sachs analyst, Harvard educated ballroom dancer extraordinaire and wannabe novelist/screenwriter Eugene Plotkin, who masterminded last year's well publicized global insider trading ring featuring strippers, a Croatian seamstress, a U.S. Postal worker, BusinessWeek employees, a Russian bath house and oh so much more, finally pleaded guilty.  (Yah, we know....that was one very long sentence!):

Plotkin admitted today to one count of conspiracy and eight of insider trading. He faces a maximum of 165 years in prison on all counts, prosecutors said. He agreed to forfeit $6.7 million.

``I understand what I did was wrong and against the law,'' he told U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman in federal court in New York.

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia charged Plotkin, a former associate in the Fixed Income Research Division at Goldman, and former Goldman analyst David Pajcin with illegally trading on secret information about pending deals they got from Stanislav Shpigelman, a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. Shpigelman pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 37 months in prison in January.

Plotkin told Freeman he attended meetings as part of the scheme ``starting around September 2004 through November 2005,'' and agreed to help his co-conspirators ``in a scheme to obtain inside information.''

Ex-Goldman Associate Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading - Bloomberg