The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday rejected former Zomax CEO James Anderson's efforts to overturn his 2006 conviction for insider trading and the prosecution's arguments for a longer prison term.
A jury found him guilty of six counts of insider trading and five counts of money-laundering. U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson sentenced Anderson to 2 1/2 years in prison, fined him $10,000, and ordered restitution of $1.4 million plus the forfeiture of an additional $1.99 million to the government.
Anderson had sold $14 million worth of his shares in the Plymouth-based company, which duplicated CDs and DVDs, after receiving in-house third-quarter forecasts for 2000 showing that sales would fall well short of expectations.
In the late 1990s, Anderson and his wife, Michelle Bedard-Anderson, then vice president of Zomax Inc., were among the highest-paid executives in Minnesota.
Their combined pay for 1999 totaled more than $20 million.
Bedard-Anderson was charged with conspiracy, mail fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. She was acquitted of all charges.
Anderson appealed his conviction, claiming insufficiency of evidence and the denial of a proposed jury instruction that would have suggested that he "acted in good faith in selling his Zomax stock."
U.S. District Judge John Jarvey of Iowa, sitting on the appeals court by designation, wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, which included Eighth Circuit Chief Judge James Loken and Circuit Judge Diana Murphy, both of Minneapolis.
