‘Don’t Do It,’ Insider Levine Tells Students

Who can better describe the dangers of insider trading than--well, an inside trader?

That certainly was the reasoning Tuesday when Dennis B. Levine, the investment banker whose 1986 arrest for insider trading led to convictions of speculator Ivan F. Boesky and others, spoke of his criminal travails to UCLA graduate business students.

Levine’s message: Don’t do it.

“It’s not worth it,” Levine said of insider trading and other white-collar transgressions in an interview following his talk, which was closed to reporters. “And it’s not just because of what happened to me. It’s because of what happened to my family, the innocent victims.”

Levine’s appearance was one of several speeches at colleges and universities he has given since he was released in last September after serving 18 months of a two-year sentence on four counts of securities fraud, tax evasion and perjury. Levine’s talk to students of UCLA’s John E. Anderson Graduate School of Business was his first at a West Coast institution.

Levine said he hoped that describing his prison experience and the toll it took on his wife and two young children would deter ambitious business students from illegal or unethical practices. The former investment banker served the first few months of his sentence in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., before being moved to a Manhattan halfway house.

Several of the approximately 60 students in attendance said Levine described in his talk an emotional story of how he was unable to explain to his then 5-year-old son why he did what he did.

“If the students can really understand and feel what’s it’s like (through my experiences), then my message will be effective,” Levine said in the interview.

Several students said the message got through.

“It’s not worth going through what he had to go through for the amount of money you can make” through insider trading, said Henry Brandon, a second-year business student.

“We had discussions in class about ethics, but I never really talked to anybody found guilty,” said David Peters, another second-year student. “So having a real-life issue and a real-life person discussing it (was) a great opportunity.”

Others, however, were not so impressed.

“He operates on a functional level of morality where you don’t do something because you don’t want to get caught, not because it’s wrong,” said Julane Marx, a first-year business student.

One student, David Strauss, objected to Levine’s being invited in the first place. “He’s a convicted felon and it’s grossly inappropriate to be inviting someone like him out here under these circumstances,” said Strauss, who read a letter protesting the event just before Levine’s speech began.

Levine, 36, was an executive in the mergers and acquisitions department at Drexel Burnham Lambert when he pleaded guilty in 1986 to making $12.6 million in illegal profits from insider trading.