The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday that it has formally settled its claims against mortgage banker Frank Tamayo, a cooperator in the agency’s insider trading case against former Simpson Thacher & Bartlett managing clerk and attorney Steven Metro.
Tamayo, who once studied law with Metro at the Touro Law Center in Central Islip, New York, has admitted to serving as a middleman between Metro and another individual who traded on stock tips involving Simpson Thacher clients. Enforcement officials claim that Tamayo used napkins and Post-it notes to pass along Metro’s tips, and then chewed up and sometimes swallowed the pieces of paper to demonstrate that the evidence was destroyed.
