A former Goldman Sachs analyst was sentenced to 28 months behind bars on Wednesday for insider trading, admitting that his conduct was “catastrophically stupid.”
Anthony Viggiano, 27, who also worked for Blackstone, pleaded guilty in January to securities fraud after the Baldwin, Long Island, man was accused of tipping off two friends on eight transactions that led to more than $400,000 in illegal profits.
US District Court Judge Valerie Caproni said the sentencing would send a message to others in the finance industry.
“You were tipping your friends and you liked being seen as the big man,” Caproni said.
Viggiano reportedly used encrypted messaging app Signal and his Xbox video game console to feed sensitive information to his stepbrother and childhood neighbor Christopher Salamone, who profited more than $300,000 in illicit gains.
Viggiano tipped off his college buddy Stephen Forlano, who pocketed around $114,000 from the transactions.
Both of them have also pleaded guilty. Forlano was sentenced to 13 months in prison in May. Salamone will learn his fate next month.
In a letter to the judge, Viggiano said he believed his actions would help his friends address financial hardships, but that in hindsight “this was a catastrophically stupid decision.”
The former analyst also passed some tips to a US army captain he was friends with who was not charged criminally and settled civil claims of insider trading.
While Viggiano did not profit off of the insider information himself, he reportedly accepted a bag-filled with $35,000 in cash for the tips.
“It is heartbreaking that Mr. Viggiano has destroyed his family unit and lost a career that he has worked so hard to build, but it is clear that he is much more than the crime he committed,” his lawyer, Steven Brill, told The Post in a statement.
“His inherent values and work ethic will soon lead him back on the right path once again.”
Prosecutors said the trading scheme began in 2021 while Viggiano was an analyst at Blackstone and learned of a $2.2 billion deal to buy a part of American International Group Inc.’s business.
The SEC said Viggiano quit six months after he started at Blackstone – so he was gone by the time the asset management firm learned of the tips. He then started at Goldman Sachs, where he facilitated more insider trading deals.
Prosecutors, – who sought a 30-month sentence – said Viggiano was “far more financially sophisticated” than his friends and “the most culpable.”
While his lawyers conceded that he was “immature and insecure,” they chocked up the tips to “seemingly overgrown frat” boy behavior and sought a year and a day in prison.
Viggiano is “not Raj Rajaratnam, or Ivan Boesky or Michael Milken — cases driven by staggering greed, complex methods and profits in hundreds of millions of dollars,” his attorneys said.
Instead, they pointed to Viggiano’s nickname used by friends – “Rigatoni” – and the fact that he took home just $35,000 in payment for the tips.
The shady analyst told the judge that “there is no excuse for my past actions” and “no one to blame but myself.”
After the FBI interviewed Viggiano and Salamone in June 2022, Salamone secretly recorded Viggiano during a conversation about the FBI’s information.
“You have both the people here who executed trades. What you’re missing is the f–cking dots. Right?” Viggiano allegedly said. “They have me” at Goldman Sachs “having access to this information.”
“It doesn’t take a brain surgeon,” he said.
Viggiano began his business career by winning a $1,000 prize with his friends in an ethics competition at the University of Tampa.
The event focused on “practicing how to apply a decision-making framework to aid investment professionals in conducting business with integrity,” according to a newsletter published by the university’s business school.
Maxwell Grimard, the president of CFA Society Tampa Bay, previously told The Post that it’s “an unfortunate thing that a past participant now is involved in something that is counter to what they learned about.”
“It is ironic that past performance is no indication of future results,” he said.
With Post wires
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