A University of Michigan neurology professor who was implicated last month in an insider trading scandal was living the good life, the New York Times reports.
A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint says Dr. Sidney Gilman received about $108,000 after allegedly leaking "material, nonpublic information" about a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug that Elan Corp. and Wyeth were developing. He has not been charged criminally but is cooperating with authorities. In the midst of the scandal, he retired.
Times reporters Bill Vlasic and Nathaniel Popper report:
While he appeared a grandfatherly academic, Dr. Gilman, 80, was living a parallel life, one in which he regularly advised a wide network of Wall Street traders through a professional matchmaking system. Those relationships afforded him payments of $100,000 or more a year — on top of his $258,000 pay from the University of Michigan — and travels with limousines, luxury hotels and private jets.
The riddle for Dr. Gilman’s longtime friends and colleagues is why a nationally respected neurologist was pulled into the high-rolling life of a consultant to financiers and how he, by his own admission, crossed the line into criminal behavior.
A student told the Times: “I wouldn’t say he was egotistical because he didn’t come across as obnoxious, but he definitely mentioned the kind of lifestyle that he had."
