Ex-Goldman banker admits to Fed leak

He admitted giving information in August 2014 to former supervisor Rohit Bansal, who was working at Goldman Sachs.

A former Goldman Sachs employee pleaded guilty Thursday to obtaining confidential information from a one-time co-worker at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and distributing it to others at the investment bank.

Jason Gross, 37, entered the plea in federal court in Manhattan before U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein, said Gross’ attorney and Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office prosecuted the case. Bansal on several occasions shared the information with senior Goldman personnel, at times writing in emails that the documents were highly confidential and directing the recipients, “Please don’t distribute”, the regulators said.

Those documents included a few pertaining to examinations of a bank that Goldman was advising about a potential transaction, regulators said.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Gross faces up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $30,000, according to the plea agreement filed in court.

Bansal’s lawyer, Scott Morvillo, who recently beat U.S. prosecutors on insider trading charges against hedgie Anthony Chiasson, declined to comment.

Gross sent the confidential documents to Bansal’s personal email address, and Bansal forwarded those to his Goldman email account, the regulator said.

Goldman Sachs agreed last week to pay $50 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services to resolve an enforcement action.

Goldman has said that after discovering Bansal obtained the confidential supervisory information, it notified regulators and fired him and a more senior employee who failed to escalate the issue. “We have reviewed our policies regarding hiring from governmental institutions and have implemented changes to make them appropriately robust”. The New York Fed also fired Gross. The New York Fed said in a statement in November that it has “zero tolerance” for employees who don’t safeguard confidential information. “They give favours to Wall Street and big business”. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, was a managing partner at Goldman Sachs.