Ex-Centerview Banker Gets Deal to End US Insider-Trading Case

Federal prosecutors have agreed to drop criminal charges against a former Centerview Partners LLC investment banker who was accused of participating in an international insider trading ring and had been living in his native Thailand for years.

In 2019, Darina Windsor and her boyfriend, Benjamin Taylor, who was living in London at the time, were accused of passing inside information on 22 companies from late 2012 to early 2018. Prosecutors alleged that the couple, who referred to each other as “Pops” and “Popsy” in their emails, made more than $1 million from the scheme.

Under a deferred prosecution agreement, securities fraud charges against Windsor will be dropped within a year as long as he fulfills his commitment to pay $100,000 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and stays out of legal trouble. The settlement included $50,000 in alleged trading profits and a $50,000 penalty.

Windsor, who left London and has been living in Thailand since the charges became public, pleaded not guilty Thursday in an unusual video hearing before U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan federal court.

“He is not in custody and there is no possibility he is in custody,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Thomas said at the hearing.

Centerview spokeswoman Dana Cimilluca said Windsor was fired a decade ago for misconduct. “Protecting our customers’ privacy is very important and something we focus on every day,” Cimilluca said in an email.

Windsor and Taylor were dragged into a criminal case alleging a vast scheme to pass insider tips about deals to a ring operating in the US, UK, France, Switzerland, Greece, Israel and Hong Kong. The case includes a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Several people, including his banker, were convicted.

Moelis & Co. in London. Taylor, who works for , is scheduled to plead guilty to a single conspiracy charge in June. In exchange, prosecutors will ask that he be given a sentence of no more than a year and a day behind bars, commensurate with the two months he served in a Monaco prison following his first arrest in 2018.

Former Swiss trader Marc Demane Debih, who was at the center of the ring and later admitted that he earned $70 million from this scheme, reached a cooperation agreement with US authorities. He helped convict other members of the gang, including former Goldman banker Bryan Cohen. Cohen, who was sentenced to prison during the pandemic, was given a year of house arrest.

The case is United States v. Taylor, 18-cr-184, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

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