Legal News

Former Monster Exec Found Guilty of Option-Backdating Charges

By Ashby Jones

A former Monster Worldwide Inc. executive, James Treacy (pictured), was convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud Tuesday in a scheme to improperly backdate millions of dollars in stock-options awards. Click here for the Dow Jones Newswire story, from Chad Bray; here for the Reuters story; here for a story from last month from Bray on the trial’s opening.

In Manhattan federal court, a jury of seven women and five men convicted Treacy, Monster’s former president and chief operating officer, of two criminal counts on Tuesday. He faces up to 25 years in prison.

Andrew J. McKelvey, Monster Worldwide’s founder, resigned in October 2006, citing, in part, the demands of coping with a probe of the stock-option practices. In January 2008, McKelvey entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in which he admitted, along with others, to routinely selecting “prices for stock-options grants based on historical dates when Monster’s stock price had closed at, or near, a low point, resulting in grants of in-the-money stock options” between 1997 through 2003.

McKelvey died in late November of pancreatic cancer. Myron F. Olesnyckyj, Monster’s former general counsel, pleaded guilty in 2007 to criminal charges in connection with the alleged backdating and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 12, 2009 (boomark / email).