REAL-LIFE INSIDER COMEDY PLAYS OUT AT DISNEY

In what one former prosecutor described as a caper worthy of a Disney comedy movie, a secretary to Zenia Mucha, Disney’s chief spokesperson, has been arrested along with her boyfriend for allegedly trying to pull off an insider-trading scheme. According to the FBI, Bonnie Jean Hoxie and her boyfriend, Yonni Sebbag, sent anonymous letters to about 35 hedge funds offering to give them looks at Disney’s earnings reports before they were released. Some of those who received the letters notified authorities. At a meeting on May 14, FBI agents, posing as hedge fund traders, reportedly passed $15,000 to Sebbag in return for a 107-page unrleased document on Disney’s quarterly earnings. The two alleged conspirators were promptly arrested and charged with wire and securities fraud. “This is the insider trading equivalent of the bank robber who drops off the demand note and comes back in an hour to pick up the money,” said Robert A. Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, told today’s (Thursday) Los Angeles Times. “It’s mind-boggling that somebody would even try to get away with something like this.” The FBI said that at one point during the shenanigans, Hoxie sent Sebbag an email with a picture from a Nieman Marcus catalogue of a $700 Stella McCartney bag. “Here is the bag tht you are going to get for me,” she reportedly wrote, following up with another picture of expensive shoes. Commented Daily Variety: “[The pair] operated more like bumbling criminals in Home Alone rather than sophisticated double crossers out of a James Bond movie.”