(Bloomberg News) Former commodities trader Vincent P. McCrudden, accused of threatening to kill financial regulators, pleaded guilty today.
McCrudden pleaded guilty to two counts of transmission of threats to injure, before opening arguments were scheduled to begin in his trial in federal court in Central Islip, New York. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 5.
McCrudden, 50, who also ran his own hedge funds, was accused of threatening the lives of 47 current and former officials, including Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary L. Schapiro and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.
McCrudden has been held without bail since he was arrested Jan. 13 returning from Singapore. He was charged with threatening the regulators in profanity-filled e-mails and, after the CFTC sued him in December, Web postings. McCrudden had said he was being persecuted for fighting back against unfair regulatory actions that destroyed his career.
"On Dec. 10, 2010, I was notified that I was being civilly sued by the CFTC for $58 million," McCrudden told U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley. "It upset me. I had started to post some things on the site that hadn't been there before."
Singapore Location
McCrudden wrote in a Sept. 30 e-mail to Daniel A. Driscoll, chief operating officer of the National Futures Association, that he had hired people to kill him. "It wasn't ever a question of 'if' I was going to kill you, it was just a question of when," McCrudden wrote, according to prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch in Brooklyn, New York.
The e-mail was sent in CFTC Chairman Gensler's name. Its language and origin in Singapore pointed to McCrudden, the government said. McCrudden moved from Long Beach, New York, to the Southeast Asian country in September because his fiancée had gotten a position there. He previously denied sending the e- mail.
Prosecutors charged that, after the CFTC accused him in the lawsuit of illegally starting his Hybrid Fund II LP in 2008 without registering it, he posted an "execution" list on his company website.
"Go buy a gun, and let's get to work in taking back our country from these criminals," he wrote on the site, according to prosecutors. "I will be the first one to lead by example."
'Provocative' List