Legal News

Life on the Lam: Has David Pajcin Fled the Country?

By Dan Slater

Remember Eugene Plotkin and David Pajcin, those Goldman Sachs-onites who ran a brazen (and bizarre) insider-trading scheme? Fortune magazine once called their story fit for the big screen. (The Law Blog wrote about them a couple times back in 2006.)

This week, the story got weirder. In a letter filed Monday, Scott Black, an SEC lawyer, said the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan has indicated that Pajcin is in violation of his probation. Prosecutors and Pajcin’s criminal-defense lawyer believe “he is no longer in the country,” according to the letter. Here’s the WSJ report.

But Jesse Siegel, Pajcin’s criminal lawyer, told the WSJ that he never told government officials that Pajcin is out of the country. “I have no information at all about where he is,” Siegel said, adding that he hasn’t spoken with Pajcin since shortly after he was sentenced in January. It “seems plausible” that Pajcin, 31, might be outside the U.S., the lawyer said. The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment.

In January, Pajcin, 31 years old, was sentenced to “time served” in January, after pleading guilty to conspiracy, insider trading and perjury in April 2006, and cooperating with prosecutors. Pajcin also was ordered to serve three years supervised release and to forfeit $6.7 million.

Pajcin’s disappearance comes the same week as a federal judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Thomas Qualls, a currency broker who failed to appear for closing arguments in his Brooklyn, N.Y., trial for commodities fraud.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 05, 2008 (boomark / email).