Political Memes

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Stewart avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone Systems stock on December 27, 2001, after receiving material, nonpublic information from Peter Bacanovic, her broker at Merrill Lynch. The day following her sale, the stock value fell 16%.

It's complicated, as expected...

On June 4, 2003, Stewart was indicted by a grand jury on nine counts, including charges of obstruction of justice.

Only four counts of obstructing justice and lying to investigators were prosecuted by the time it got to court.

After a highly publicized six-week jury trial, Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy to obstruct, of obstruction of an agency proceeding, and of making false statements to federal investigators and was sentenced in July 2004 to serve a five-month term in a federal correctional facility and a two-year period of supervised release (including five months of electronic monitoring).

But insider trading is a civil charge not a criminal charge... Apparently.

On the day she was indicted, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against Stewart with charges of insider trading (for violating §17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and SEC Rule 10b-5). The civil charges were stayed pending the criminal proceeding.

In August 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had agreed to settle the related civil case against Stewart. Under the settlement, Stewart agreed to a five-year bar from serving as a director, or as the CEO, CFO (or other officer roles in which she would be responsible for preparing, auditing, or disclosing financial results), of any public company. She also agreed to pay the maximum penalty of three times the losses she avoided, or $195,000.