On Forbes.com today, Michael Bobelian describes an interesting question that was raised at an insider trading conference at Columbia Law School last month. One of the panelists, Mark Pomerantz, 

asked a roomful of experts if they could recall a case from the past 25 years in which a defendant was acquitted in an insider trading case.  Though no one in attendance had looked into this specific question, not one person could remember a defendant winning an insider trading trial during the past quarter century.

Can this really be true? Admittedly, no acquittals immediately came to mind for me, either, but a Google search produced reports of at least four such acquittals in U.S. cases:

Ralph R. Cioffi: On November 10, 2009, Cioffi, a Bear Stearns hedge fund manager, was acquitted of insider trading charges as well as other securities fraud charges.

Michelle Bedard-Anderson: On June 5, 2006, Bedard-Anderson, a top executive at Zomax Inc., was acquitted of all insider trading charges by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson (D. Minn).

Paul Gianamore: On May 14, 2004, Gianamore, a financial analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, was acquitted of charges of insider trading.

Alvin DeShano: On June 5, 1989, DeShano, the accounting director for the Carl's Jr. hamburger chain, was acquitted on a charge of insider trading.

Can you help fill out this list? Please provide other examples of acquittals in criminal insider trading prosecutions in the past 25 years in the comments. And no fair listing UK cases, those are too easy!

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