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Joe Lewis, the British billionaire whose family owns Tottenham Hotspur football club, will avoid being sent to prison for insider trading, after a federal judge in Manhattan agreed on Thursday to sentence the 87-year-old to a $5mn fine and three years of probation.
Lewis pleaded guilty to fraud charges in January, following an investigation in which he was found to have passed on stock tips to friends, private pilots and a girlfriend. The recipients made more than half a million dollars by trading on the non-public information, to which Lewis had been privy through his seats on various corporate boards, according to prosecutors.
His crimes carried a suggested sentence of up to two years in prison, but probation officers had advised against incarcerating Lewis, in part because of his advanced age.
Addressing the court on Thursday, with an eye patch across his face, a visibly shaken Lewis said he had “made a terrible mistake”.
“I broke the law. I am ashamed, sorry and hold myself accountable,” he added.
In their sentencing recommendation to the judge, US prosecutors — who claimed the tips amounted to gifts and in-lieu payments by Lewis — had acknowledged that “unlike many defendants who commit insider trading, [his] conduct was not motivated by personal profit”, as the billionaire did not himself trade on the information in question.
They added that given Lewis’ deteriorating health, the fact that he has “otherwise lived a law-abiding life” and his voluntary surrender to US authorities meant the suggested sentence would be “greater than necessary” in this case.
Lewis, a UK citizen who resides in the Bahamas, previously described his crimes as motivated by “hubris and childish exuberance”, and said the saga was a “self-inflicted humiliation” with which he would have to live “for the rest of my days”.
After handing down the sentence, Judge Jessica Clarke said while Lewis’s “offence was without a doubt a serious one”, he deserved leniency because he “faced these charges head on instead of engaging in what could have been a lengthy extradition fight”. His life “would be at serious risk if he were to be incarcerated”, she added.
Born to an immigrant family above an east London pub in 1937, Lewis dropped out of school as a teenager and joined his father’s catering business. He found early success with a chain of themed restaurants before relocating from the UK in 1979 to the Bahamas.
He subsequently built a reputation in financial markets for big, speculative trades on currencies, including a profitable bet against sterling ahead of Black Wednesday in 1992, when Britain exited the European exchange rate mechanism.
Having found further success as a real estate investor, Lewis went on to hold a majority stake in English football club Tottenham Hotspur for more than two decades. That shareholding is now owned by a trust on behalf of his family.
The Premier League side, which has drawn interest from investors in recent years, previously described the charges against Lewis as “unconnected with the club”.
Lewis is also the founder of Tavistock Group, which owns assets ranging from investments in more than 200 companies to real estate, agriculture and artworks by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Lucian Freud.
As part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Lewis will also be forced to give up his seats on the boards of companies publicly traded in the US. He will pay a civil penalty of $1.6mn to resolve a related US Securities and Exchange Commission case.
Prosecutors agreed to let Lewis return to the Bahamas on Thursday evening, leaving his yacht behind as collateral.