“It just felt right,” Plotkin told Fortune of his
ballroom-dance career. “When you’re in front
of everybody, you get a chance to emote.
You make yourself very vulnerable and
show who you are and who you can be.”Photo: Rick Maiman/Bloomberg News/Landov
Eugene Plotkin, a 28-year-old Harvard graduate, former professional ballroom dancer and Goldman analyst, was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison for insider trading. For an inordinately long time after he was accused of helping mastermind an elaborate scheme using illegal tips and purloined copies of a market-moving magazine to make millions, Plotkin maintained his innocence: He and his co-conspirator even wrote, directed, and starred in their own movie, about a successful Wall Street banker (at “Galeon Partners” according to Fortune) who is tragically framed for theft. Plotkin submitted the film to Sundance back in 2003; alas, it did not get in. Perhaps he ought to have stuck to the real story, in which a 63-year-old retired underwear seamstress in Croatia suddenly makes $2 million moving shares of Reebok stock, just days before Salomon AG’s $3.8 billion acquisition of the company, which tips off the Securities and Exchange Commission to a pair of bright, young bankers who, it turns out, hatched a plan involving a Merrill Lynch analyst, a stripper, a guy from Brooklyn called Elvis Santana, and two workers at the Wisconsin plant that prints Business Week in order to rake in $6.7 million. But there’s hope for this feature film yet. “I’d love to do something with writing or something creative,” Plotkin told Fortune last year. We guess now he’ll have the time.
Ex-Goldman Associate Sentenced to More Than 4 Years for Inside Trades [NYT]
