"Ex-Morgan Stanley broker to plead guilty in napkin-eating scheme"

From Reuters:

A former Morgan Stanley stockbroker accused of a three-man insider trading scheme in which one of his co-conspirators allegedly wrote stock tips on napkins before eating them has agreed to plead guilty, according to a court filing.

Vladimir Eydelman has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in New Jersey, U.S. Magistrate Judge Cathy Waldor said in an order filed on Thursday granting a 60-day continuance to allow time to schedule his plea.

Eydelman was charged with the $5.6 million scheme alongside two other men: Frank Tamayo, a Brooklyn, New York, mortgage broker, and Steven Metro, then a managing clerk at New York law firm Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett.

According to prosecutors, Metro passed tips about the firm's clients to Tamayo, a friend and former law school classmate, at bars or coffee shops, where Metro would write down the ticker symbols of stocks to be purchased on napkins or sticky notes.

Tamayo would then meet Eydelman in Grand Central station in Manhattan, show him the stock symbols and then "chew the paper or napkin" in order to destroy the evidence, the government said...MORE