Martha Stewart Case Summary

Martha’s innocence claims begin to crumble, once her broker’s assistant, who handled her transaction to sell shares in ImClone confessed his boss, Peter Bacanovic, encouraged him to lie, in support of Martha’s stop order claims, in which he did. Reluctantly the assistant told prosecutors that he had also been told by his boss to tell Martha, that the CEO of InClone and his family members were selling their shares and she should consider doing the same. The assistant “Douglas Faneuil, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charge for his involvement, which included not truthfully telling what he knew about the actions of his supervisor and the sales of the shares. Of course, this was a far lenient charge given, due to his participation in helping the authorities. …show more content…
SEC requested all her records, pertaining to ImClone, including phone and email documents. Neither Stewart or her broker could present evidence supporting the stop-loss order ever existed. Martha’s claims were appearing to not have any support as the SEC was closing in on deciding on what charges to bring against her. Additional charges were being suggested due to the House Energy and Commerce committee believed that Martha had lied to the committee earlier when addressing the issue. The federal government did not indict or charge her with insider trading. Instead, the SEC filed securities and fraud charges against her on June 4, 2003. Martha Stewart stood trial for these indictments. The lack of ability to prove the stop order sale existed along with poor witness testimony for her defense, Martha Stewart was found guilty on four counts of obstructing justice and lying to investigators. The judge then sentences her to five years in prison along with two years of supervised release once imprisonment is