Former Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from New York, was a hardcore devotee to the high-minded business principles he often touted, but those guidelines could not save him or his son from an insider-trading conviction.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York urged in a letter to Judge Vernon S. Broderick on Monday to impose a sentence in the range of 46-57 months. Both father and son are expected to be sentenced on January 17.
For the last 10 years, Chris Collins campaigned as an initiate of business principles popularized by Jack Welch at General Electric known as the Sigma Six, promising to “run government like a business.” The five main concepts of Sigma Six are define, measure, analyze, improve, and control.
“He was huge on that, on that business organizing principle. He used to talk about it all the time wherever he went, and that was kind of his shtick,” one New York political consultant told the Washington Examiner.
Chris Collins resigned from his congressional seat last September prior to pleading guilty to insider trading after notifying his son Cameron Collins about an Australian biotech company’s drug trial failure before it was publicly known.
As a board member of the biotech firm, Chris Collins instructed his son to sell his shares in the company prior to the information of drug trial results going public. Additionally, Cameron Collins notified Stephen Zarsky, his co-conspirator and the father of his fiancee, of the drug trial failure before the news went public.
Although Chris Collins held his shares, he falsely claimed that no one he knew or anyone close to him dumped their shares of the biotech company. However, according to new information in last week’s court papers, all three men lied to the FBI about the circumstances last June, the Buffalo News reports.
Chris Collins, who was the first member of Congress to endorse President Trump, pleaded guilty to the charges of insider trading in October. The losses he attempted to have his family avoid in the illegal stock dumps amounted to $768,000.
Prior to the insider-trading scandal erupting, Chris Collins was no stranger to trouble. As Erie County executive and gubernatorial hopeful in 2010, during then-Gov. Paterson’s State of the State address, he reportedly told a woman who was looking for a seat in the crowded chamber, “I’m sure if you offer someone a lap dance, you can find a place to sit.”
Another political source told the Washington Examiner that Chris Collins told a woman at a 2008 Manhattan fundraiser, “Anytime I come to New York City, I go down to Chinatown because I get all the best foot massages.”
A GOP operative who knows Chris Collins disputes that he would have said this.
“I’ve known him for a long time, and I never once heard that,” the operative said. “Particularly given how many of his comments were covered when he ran for governor in 2009, I find it hard to believe that something like this wouldn’t have popped then. Seems a little gratuitous given the timing.”
