Business

Finance pro sold client secrets for Patriots tickets, feds say

Tom Brady and the Patriots played the Dallas Cowboys in 2011 at Gillette Stadium. The Boston Globe

By Adam Vaccaro

June 23, 2015

2 minutes to read

Brian Bennett had a pretty surefire system to score tickets to any sporting event or concert he wanted—including $1,200 seats to a 2011 New England Patriots game at Gillette Stadium, according to federal prosecutors.

All he had to do was betray his employer and its clients’ confidence, prosecutors have said, committing wire fraud conspiracy in the process.

The seemingly free tickets have come with a high cost. Federal prosecutors filed charges last week against Bennett in U.S. District Court in Boston.

Bennett worked deep behind the scenes in the financial industry at a proxy advisory firm, according to the complaint. His company—identified in past media reports as global leader Institutional Shareholder Services—helped large investors decide how to vote on shareholder issues.

Bennett worked with an unnamed co-conspirator who worked on the opposite side of the industry, for a proxy solicitation firm, according to the complaint (the firm in question, according to USA Today, was Wall Street company Georgeson). Proxy solicitation firms help large companies determine how shareholders will vote.

Getting shareholder information can be hard work. In a 2010 email cited in the complaint, the co-conspirator explained to Bennett that his insight at the advisory firm provided a valuable shortcut.

“80 percent of clients do not divulge… they just say they voted if that — they don’t want the harassing phone calls either …. and [it’s] too much to keep a relationship with thousands of advisors, hedge funds, and custodians especially in this environment,’’ the co-conspirator said, according to the complaint.

For several years, prosecutors say, Bennett traded information about ISS clients’ voting habits to the co-conspirator.

In exchange, he got tickets.

Bennett received tickets for information dating back to 2008, according to the complaint. Other events included an Opening Day Major League Baseball game, a college basketball game in 2009, and a 2011 rock concert. The tickets for some of the events were not purchased by the co-conspirator. One set was bought by “a managing director’’ at Georgeson, and another was paid for by the company, prosecutors say.

In June 2011, Bennett provided his co-conspirator with information about how a client voted on a pharmaceutical company’s board election, prosecutors say. Bennett wrote to his co-conspirator at the time, “you owe me big time, over and over…’’

A few months later, the co-conspirator bought him college football tickets. That was followed up with Patriots tickets for an October 2011 game against the Dallas Cowboys.

In 2012, a whistleblower at Georgeson tipped off the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to the arrangement his company had with Bennett. ISS, Bennet’s employer, eventually paid a $300,000 fine to the SEC.

Bennett lived in Massachusetts toward the end of his tenure with ISS. He was fired in 2012, according to the complaint.

Bennett is scheduled to be in court on July 9, according to the court docket. He was charged with a bill of information, meaning he agreed to be charged and to plead guilty without being indicted.