On March 19, 2025, the Second Circuit of U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the insider trading conviction of former Indiana Congressman Stephen Buyer. In 2023, Buyer was convicted by a federal jury of four counts of securities fraud in connection with two separate but interrelated insider trading schemes involving the purchase of Sprint Corporation securities in 2018 and Navigant Consulting Inc. securities in 2019. For his role in the schemes, Buyer was sentenced to 22 months of imprisonment, 3 years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay $354,027.72.
Buyer had primarily challenged the district court’s admission of a cellphone evidence report that was generated by the FBI using special software and the testimony of a digital forensic examiner with the FBI who authenticated the report. Buyer opposed the authentication of the report claiming that the report’s admission violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which afforded him the right to cross-examine the analyst who prepared the report. He also argued that the examiner’s testimony was improperly admitted as lay witness testimony rather than expert opinion. The Second Circuit upheld the admission of evidence because Buyer’s counsel failed to timely raise the Confrontation Clause objection and, therefore, failed to preserve the objection for appeal. The Second Circuit also concluded that any error based on the admission of the examiner’s testimony as lay opinion versus expert opinion was harmless.
According to the Second Circuit’s Summary Order, Buyer purchased Sprint securities in 2018 after learning from an executive at T-Mobile that the company planned to acquire Sprint. In 2019, he allegedly purchased Navigant Consulting stock after an employee of Guidehouse Inc. informed him of the company’s impending acquisition of Navigant. The stock purchases were purportedly made before the mergers were publicly disclosed. Following each public announcement, Buyer allegedly sold his stock and generated illegal profits totaling more than $350,000.
Summary Order | USAO SDNY Press Release – September 19, 2023