Scott London pleaded guilty in Los Angeles court earlier today, but prior to his appearance, he gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal where he admitted that after he had given his watch guy/co-conspirator Bryan Shaw material, non-public information about KPMG clients 14 times, the two men decided that their little insider trading scheme was "stupid" and discontinued it.
However! As we all know, it didn't end there:
Several months later, London said, Shaw again started asking him for information on KPMG clients — only by that time, unbeknownst to London, Shaw was cooperating with the government’s investigation of their scheme, and federal agents were monitoring their conversations.“I was surprised that he wanted to do it,” London said. “I should have recognized something was up, but I didn’t.” In fact, he said, he rebuffed Shaw’s initial attempts to get information, but Shaw kept calling him, and London said he finally passed on more information. “Ultimately I allowed it to occur.”
Despite his failing to recognize that his insider trading co-conspirator was up to no good when he requested him to break the law for the fifteenth time, London is ready to take responsibility for his actions and reiterated his former's ability to prevent these kinds of things from happening:
London has said KPMG had no involvement in the scheme, and he said during the interview that the giant accounting firm has “great” safeguards against the disclosure of confidential information. But “unfortunately you can’t always control the human element.”
The human element is set to be sentenced on September 16th.