Apple are well known for their theft of patents, now their former top lawyer who was Director of Corporate Law, has fessed up to criminal activity, while working for the iPhone and Mac PC manufacturer, at the time he was being paid over US$500,000 a year base salary.
Gene Levoff’s job at Apple was to police insider trading, the only problem is he is now the guilty one, who used his access to Apple’s draft Securities and Exchange Commission filings, to make his own illegal trades based on his insider information.
The former top Apple lawyer was sentenced Thursday to four years of probation by US District Judge William J. Martini in the USA after he pleaded guilty in June 2022 to using his access to reap a benefit for himself.
This is not the first time that a senior Apple executive has faced criminal charges.
Last year a court in California dismissed bribery charges against Apple’s Security Chief Thomas Moyer and two officers in the Sheriff’s Office.
Prosecutors alleged at the time that that Moyer had offered to donate iPads to the Sheriff’s Office after a 2019 meeting in exchange for help getting concealed weapons permits for the company’s executive protection team.
In the latest case, Levoff, 49, had faced as long as two years in prison under his plea agreement, and prosecutors had urged the judge to impose jail time to deter similar crimes.
“If people who are insiders at massive companies like Apple don’t get prison for insider trading, then who does?” federal prosecutor Joshua Haber said.
But Martini said he didn’t think it was necessary to send Levoff to prison to deter others, noting that the 2001 Stanford Law School graduate already lost his job and will never practice law again.
Gene Levoff leaves court after his hearing.
Levoff joined Apple in 2008 and eventually became director of corporate law.
In that role, he was responsible for enforcing the company’s rules against insider trading and routinely reminded other employees that they were barred from trading on confidential information.
Bloomberg claimed that he also co-chaired Apple’s disclosure committee, which reviewed its quarterly and annual earnings before they were publicly released.
Prosecutors claim that he used his advance knowledge to buy shares ahead of positive results or sell them before disappointing ones.
Prosecutors said Levoff made around $227,000 in profits and avoided $377,000 in losses between 2011 and 2016.
Levoff agreed to forfeit around $604,000 as part of his plea deal.
Apple initially placed Levoff on leave in the summer of 2018 and fired him about two months later.
He was charged by federal prosecutors and sued by the SEC the following year.
“I just want to say how very sorry I am, and how deeply ashamed I am,” Levoff said in court.
Levoff had initially fought the charges by arguing that insider trading was an unconstitutional “judge-made” crime not barred by any statute. Martini rejected Levoff’s “Hail Mary” motion to dismiss the indictment.
Late last year, a former senior Apple employee was sentenced to three years in prison for a fraud scheme that cost the company more than $17 million.
55-year-old Dhirendra Prasad, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States Government in November.
