‘Silver Platter’
Cunniffe was caught, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a bid for leniency. Cunniffe began secretly recording the older Stewart. In one conversation, at Andrew’s Coffee Shop in midtown Manhattan, Bob allegedly told Cunniffe that his son had scolded him for failing to trade on a tip.
“I can’t believe it,” Bob quoted Sean as saying, according to prosecutors. “I handed you this on a silver platter and you didn’t invest.”
Bob Stewart pleaded guilty just three months after his arrest. Along with the recordings, prosecutors had e-mails in which the older Stewart and Cunniffe used golf references to conceal their trades.
Andrew Gray, a JPMorgan spokesman, and Jim Margolin, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan, declined to comment on the case. Kara Findlay, a Perella Weinberg spokeswoman, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The firm previously said the allegations, if true, violate “not just the law but our principles.”
For a graphic of cases in an insider-trading crackdown, click here.
With Sean in court, the government will play his father’s words even if Bob isn’t called as a witness. Prosecutors say the “silver-platter” remark is “devastating” to his defense. The case has also been crushing to the family.
“It tortures him daily to see the devastation he has caused,” Bob’s wife Claudia told the judge who sentenced him. “It is painful to see this once-proud father, husband and neighbor go through the mental anguish Bob is now constantly living.”
Gallagher, who married Bob and Claudia Stewart, said Sean was a “very respectful” boy who grew into an “admirable, upright and competent” man. The Stewarts were a tight-knit family in a suburban Long Island neighborhood of unassuming but well-tended homes. Bob worked as an accountant, chief financial officer and consultant at various companies.
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