British billionaire Joe Lewis says he should be spared prison time after pleading guilty to insider trading and instead be put on supervised release for three years and fined $5 million.
Lewis’s advanced age — he is 87 — and his cooperation with prosecutors are among the factors that weigh in favor of probation over prison, his lawyers said in a court filing Thursday evening.
In January, the investor who rose spectacularly from London’s East End to become one of Britain’s richest men admitted in Manhattan federal court to three counts of securities fraud, including conspiracy. US prosecutors had charged him with passing inside corporate information to his private pilots and his girlfriend.
Lewis is the founder of the investment firm Tavistock Group, which has stakes in more than 200 companies, including luxury hotels, resorts and sports. He and his family have a net worth of $7.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and he’s the former owner of the Tottenham Hotspur Premier League soccer team.
Under his plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to oppose a sentence lower than the range suggested under federal sentencing guidelines of 18 to 24 months in prison, Lewis’s lawyers said in the filing.
His lawyers offered another reason to keep him out of prison: As a foreign national, Lewis would not be eligible to serve time in a prison camp with a dormitory setting, but instead would be sent to a higher-security facility with “a more dangerous inmate population.”
He is due to be sentenced April 4 by US District Judge Jessica Clarke. The government has yet to weigh in with its sentencing recommendation.