R. Foster Winans

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**Foster Winans**
R. Foster Winans
Born:	August 5, 1948 Philadelphia, PA
Occupation:	Journalist, author, ghostwriter, commentator
Genres:	Business, finance
Website:	http://fosterwinans.com

R. Foster Winans was a Wall Street Journal columnist, who co-wrote the [3] "Heard on the Street Column" from 1982 to 1984. During a well-publicized crackdown on insider trading that would later snare some of the hottest traders on Wall Street (such as Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky), he was indicted by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani and convicted in 1985 of violating Federal law by leaking advance word of the contents of his columns to a stockbroker, Peter N. Brant,^[1] at Kidder, Peabody & Co., an old-line brokerage firm. Brant was decades later labeled a recidivist^[2] by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Although Winans admitted his participation in the scheme and to earning $31,000 from it, he pleaded not guilty, arguing that his behavior was unethical but not criminal. Winans was found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in prison, later reduced to a year and a day. Both the securities industry and the First Amendment lobby criticized the prosecution as over-stepping the bounds of the securities laws, and filed amicus briefs during the appeals process. Winans's case included two co-defendants and reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 as Carpenter v. United States, where it produced a rare 4-4 deadlock.^[3] The missing member was due to the retirement for health reasons of Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. and the failure to win Senate confirmation by his Reagan-designated replacement, Federal Appeals Court Judge Robert H. Bork. The case is still taught and debated in law and journalism schools.[4] Winans's book about the case, Trading Secrets, was published in 1986 by St. Martin's Press in the U.S. and under the title Wall Street in France.^[4] It was excerpted in Esquire Magazine and was a Book-of-the-Month Club Selection. A year later, Oliver Stone's award-winning film ["Wall Street"] debuted, featuring a similar syccophant-svengali relationship and an insider trading scheme.

Winans has ghosted, co-written, and/or independently produced more than 30 books in the two decades since serving nine months in Federal prison in 1988. In 1999 he founded a nonprofit writers's resource center in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and ran it for six years before returning to writing and producing books.

Between 2003 and 2005, with the indictment and conviction of Martha Stewart in connection with suspicious trades in Imclone stock, Winans frequently appeared on television and radio programs discussing the issue of insider trading, Stewart's likely fate, and business ethics. He has appeared before law-enforcement and academic audiences speaking about his experiences and the psychology behind white-collar crime.

Winans once observed: "The only reason to invest in the market is because you think you know something others don’t."^[5]

[edit] Notes and references

^ Not to be confused with an unrelated Peter N. Brant, a wealthy industrialist and socialite from Connecticut.
^ [1]
^ [http://supreme.justia.com/us/484/19/case.html/
^ Trading Secrets site
^ [2]