British billionaire and owner of soccer giant Tottenham Hotspur Joe Lewis has been indicted on charges of sharing insider trading secrets with his romantic partners and friends in a "brazen" criminal scheme, U.S. prosecutors announced Tuesday.
The people with whom Lewis slipped the confidential stock tips used the secrets to make "millions of dollars on the stock market," Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a Twitter statement. "Thanks to Lewis, those bets were a sure thing."
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Statement of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams on U.S. v. Joseph Lewis pic.twitter.com/9rGTTYVx6h
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) July 25, 2023
Prosecutors allege that Lewis used his access to various corporations to obtain lucrative secrets, which he then shared "as a way to compensate his employees or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers." The charges against him include securities fraud and conspiracy.
David Zornow, an attorney for Lewis, said his client came to the U.S. "to answer these ill-conceived charges" and fight them vigorously, according to the Associated Press.
“The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr. Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment,” Zornow said in a statement.
Lewis's investments in various companies reportedly gave him control of board seats, where he placed associates who told him what they learned. Prosecutors said that, between 2019 and 2021, Lewis illegally spread that confidential information to his personal assistant, his pilots, his girlfriend, and more people, urging them to make a profit from it.
Forbes estimates that Lewis has a net worth of $6.1 billion, owning the Tavistock Group, with more than 200 assets across 13 countries. Through the private investment organization, which he founded, Lewis owns Tottenham, a massive British soccer club that competes in the Premier League, the wealthiest league in Europe, if not the world.
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At the end of May, Forbes ranked Tottenham as the ninth most valuable soccer team in the world at $2.8 billion.
"None of this was necessary. Joe Lewis is a wealthy man," Williams said of the alleged crimes committed by the defendant. "That's classic corporate corruption. It's cheating. And it's against the law."