A former Morgan Stanley financial analyst, and her husband, each received 18 months in prison for insider trading and tipping.

Michael Garcia, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, today announced that Jennifer Wang, 31, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for providing her husband with material, nonpublic information — which she stole from her former employer, Morgan Stanley — relating to acquisitions of three publicly traded companies.

Wang’s husband, Rubin Chen, 34, was also sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for trading based on the information she provided.

The couple each pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiring to commit insider trading and three counts of insider trading. Wang, formerly a vice president and financial analyst at Morgan Stanley, and Chen, a former vice president and analyst at another financial services company responsible for managing hedge fund investments, netted over US$600,000 from the scheme.

The sentences were imposed by US District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan federal court. Judge McMahon stated that the prohibition on insider trading was a “bright-line rule” that is “indoctrinated” to all who work on Wall Street. Before imposing sentence, she also stated that insider trading “cheats the entire investing public. It is a serious crime. . . . Only a sentence of incarceration promotes respect for this law.”

In addition to the prison sentences, both the accused also resigned from their respective employers following a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry and internal investigations conducted by their employers. The judge also imposed one year of supervised release for Wang, two years of supervised release for Chen, and ordered them to forfeit US$611,248 in illegal gains.