Trader Pleads Guilty in Insider Trading Scheme That Netted More Than $47 Million

A stock trader at an asset management firm that oversees more than $1 trillion in assets for pensions and charitable institutions pleaded guilty to securities fraud related to his role in a massive insider trading scheme, the Manhattan U.S. attorney announced on Tuesday.

Lawrence Billimek, who was arrested in December 2022, worked with at least one co-conspirator to place personal trades ahead of massive buy orders for clients of the asset management firm where he worked, TIAA-CREF, prosecutors said. The maximum sentence for the charge is 20 years in prison.

“For more than five years, Lawrence Billimek abused his trusted position in a major financial services organization to illicitly generate tens of millions of dollars in profits through insider trading” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a prepared statement. Williams added that “Billimek knew his actions were wrong, using burner phones and lies to try to cover his scheme, but he continued to undermine the integrity of the market anyway.”

Between 2016 and December 2022, Billimek allegedly gave insider information he had access to from his role at TIAA-CREF to a co-conspirator, who then paid Billimek a portion of the money he made from the trades, prosecutors said. Billimek's co-conspirator was not identified, but Alan Williams, a retired financial executive, was charged along with Billimek by the Justice Department, as well as in a parallel civil action by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in December 2022.

Williams, who is in his late 70s, pleaded guilty to the Justice Department charges earlier this year.

"I expected him to plead the moment I saw the evidence in the case," Jeffrey Harris Lichtman, a lawyer for Williams, said of Billimek's guilty plea. "I was surprised it took this long."

A lawyer for Billimek did not immediately respond to The Messenger’s request for comment.

Prosecutors said Billimek used pre-paid, unregistered 'burner' phones to communicate with his co-conspirator in an effort to avoid creating an evidentiary trail leading back to him. He also allegedly lied to various financial organizations about the money generated during the scheme. But the trades were detected by a sophisticated monitoring system used by the SEC, known as the Consolidated Audit Trail Database, which monitors markets for unusual trading activity.

The scheme generated more than $47 million in illicit proceeds over the years, according to the SEC. As part of the plea, Billimek agreed to forfeit more than $12.2 million, which prosecutors said was the amount of proceeds traceable to the scheme. He will also have to give up eight properties across Louisiana, Oregon, Texas, Hawaii and Idaho.