By Jody Godoy
NEW YORK (Reuters) – British multibillionaire Joe Lewis is scheduled to face sentencing in a U.S. court on Thursday for illegally sharing stock tips he gleaned through his investments.
Federal sentencing guidelines call for a prison sentence of up to two years, but prosecutors in Manhattan and his attorneys have urged leniency for the 87-year-old, given the investment firm founder’s health and his admission of guilt in January.
The guidelines do not bind U.S. District Judge Jessica Clarke, who will hand down a sentence based on a range of factors including Lewis’ personal history, the seriousness of the crime and the need to deter others.
Prosecutors said the Tavistock Group founder, whose family trust controls a majority of London’s Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, passed inside information on his portfolio companies to two of his private pilots as well as friends, personal assistants and romantic partners. Those tips enabled the recipients of the information to reap millions of dollars in profit, according to prosecutors.
Lewis in January entered a plea deal with prosecutors agreeing to a $50 million fine of his Bahamas company, Broad Bay.
He has also agreed to resign board seats he holds at U.S. companies and relinquish his majority ownership of Boxer Capital, the biotech-focused fund where prosecutors say he got tips.
In a letter to the court, Lewis apologized for his actions, saying they were spurred by hubris and childish exuberance and resulted in a devastating and self-inflicted humiliation.
The London native, who now lives in the Bahamas, traveled to the New York to face the charges immediately after learning of his indictment, his attorneys said in court papers. Lewis has since remained in the country, posting $300 million bail secured by his yacht, the Aviva, and a private aircraft.
His decision not to fight extradition, coupled with his significant health issues, led prosecutors to recommend leniency for Lewis, whose doctors have said a prison sentence could be lethal.
Lewis is worth $6.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
Prosecutors have said he collected inside information about four companies in which he had invested, and tipped friends and associates between 2019 and 2021.
According to prosecutors, the companies included cancer therapy developer Mirati Therapeutics and BCTG Acquisition, a blank-check company that Boxer Capital sponsored and which took biotech company Tango Therapeutics public in a merger in 2021.
Two of Lewis’ pilots were also accused in the case of making millions of dollars in illegal profits from Lewis’ tips.
One of them, Patrick O’Connor, has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in May.
The second pilot, Bryan Waugh, has denied wrongdoing and said the charges should be dismissed because he is only accused of trading on stock recommendations, not inside information.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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