Former Needham Police Officer Sentenced for Insider Trading Conspiracy

BOSTON – A former Needham police officer was sentenced yesterday for conspiring to trade on inside information about a Massachusetts company’s planned acquisition of a California semiconductor company.

David Forte, 60, of Acton, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to one year of supervised release, with the first six months to be served in home confinement. Judge Burroughs also imposed a $25,000 fine. Forte was charged in January 2022 along with co-conspirators John Younis and Gregory Manning. In June 2023, Forte was convicted by a federal jury of one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of securities fraud. 

Beginning in or around June 2016, Forte obtained material non-public information from his brother, who was a senior executive at Analog Devices, Inc. (Analog), a Massachusetts-based semiconductor company, about Analog’s planned acquisition of Linear Technology Corp. (Linear), a semiconductor company based in Milpitas, Calif. Forte passed the information to Younis and Manning and proposed that the two purchase Linear securities and share their trading profits with him. To avoid detection, Forte did not trade Linear securities in his own name, and he advised Younis not to buy Analog securities because of his brother’s role at the company. 

Over the course of the week leading up to the public announcement of the acquisition on July 26, 2016, Forte exchanged numerous phone calls with Younis and Manning, and Younis and Manning amassed Linear securities – sometimes trading within minutes of phone calls with Forte. After the announcement of the deal, which caused Linear’s share price to increase by 30 percent, Younis and Manning sold their Linear securities for a profit and later paid Forte a share of the money they made from trading on Forte’s stock tip. 

In June 2022, Younis was sentenced by U.S. Senior District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel to one month of home detention and two years of probation after pleading guilty to his role in the conspiracy. Manning pleaded guilty in October 2023 and is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 3, 2024.  

Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division made the announcement. The Securities & Exchange Commission provided valuable assistance. Assistant U.S. Attorneys David M. Holcomb and Leslie A. Wright of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.