Insider Trading Felony & Medical/Dental School

[Planes2Doc]

Details aside, my recommendation is to speak with an attorney who specializes in issues of licensure. Find out if you could obtain a medical license, and then go from there.

Yeah if you can get licensed, then your best bet might be a Caribbean school. You probably have the brains to be successful. If you can make it to the top of your class, you can be very successful when you come back to the United States. Good luck!

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[music2doc]

Thank you in advance for any constructive feedback and I request you only reply if you have direct evidence/examples that can help make my decision.

I went to a top Ivy League university, graduated with a near 4.0, and had a sterling business career which went down in flames due to insider trading. Insider trading is a federal felony, not a misdemeanor. I am quite sorry this all happened. It is & was inexcusable and tragic.

I am trying to resuscitate my life and earlier in my life worked in health care where I had tremendous respect for the doctors I worked with. Medicine is a noble career & since I am financially secure, my hope is to work with Doctors without Borders and in impoverished areas where I can make the greatest impact/difference without concern for maximizing compensation.

Though I am in my thirties, I started the preparation to take pre-reqs so that I can apply to medical & dental school.

The more I read I realize my efforts might be futile, because I might automatically be 'dinged' for the scarlet letter of a 'Felony'. Does anyone have advice (informed by concrete knowledge)?

I understand that many may stop at the word 'felony'. However, insider trading is a very odd crime. I was caught up in something much larger than me, and like most situations, things aren't exactly how they seem. Insider trading is also a non-violent & arguably victimless offense.

I see what happened as a chance to turn my life around - I had wanted to for years but the compensation on Wall Street kept pulling me further deeper into an abyss of moral relativity.

Thank you.

To be honest, I think my first concern upon reading this is the bolded above. You apparently don't even see why what you did is wrong. That alone -- even without the actual crime -- is a red flag to me. Yes, your actions have repercussions -- both on others and yourself. As has been highlighted above, insider training is harmful on an economic level and can result in financial harm to others (investors and investees). It is a form of cheating and stealing. On the one hand, I am somewhat empathetic (although not sympathetic) to the feeling that you "did not know" what you were doing. However, when you took the job, you accepted responsibility for knowing the laws and ethics relating to your company and its business. The same would be true of a physician. You cannot expect others to simply forgive your ignorance. That may have worked when you were 6 -- maybe even when you were 16 -- but you're an adult now. And you were an adult when you screwed up.

Medicine is not so black and white in terms of ethics, either. If your moral compass is all over the place such that you fell so quickly into moral relativism in your old job, what makes you think medicine would do you any better?

To: Planes2Doc

I cannot. Felonies cannot be expunged, only pardoned (by the President of the United States). My hope was that as a doctor I could do amazing selfless work & then earn a pardon in 15 years...

For those who read this thread, please see this as a cautionary tale and one of compassion. People who make mistakes are probably some of the people who receive the least amount of compassion in our society (b/c folks see them as 'deserving' a lack of sympathy). But for all types of mistakes, from blue collar to white collar, everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves. And yet we setup the rules so that they can't. It's beyond disheartening, it fills me with a sense of despair I cannot describe.

To gyngyn: You may see me as having lacked integrity, but I know myself. I wish I had done more to help society in my twenties but I did much more than many others. Many of my classmates are doctors and while I have plead guilty to a federal crime, I know I am more ethical & care more about others than many of them. I'm hurt that you judge so harshly, but I'm appreciative of your bluntness. I read your messages and you speak from a position of experience & knowledge.

No one deserves a chance a to redeem themselves. We certainly deserve the opportunity to seek redemption, but neither you nor I can expect others to forgive, forget, and move on. We can hope. We can seek. But whether or not we receive is not ours to determine.

Nevertheless, I admire that you want to serve others selflessly in the future. I hope you are able to find an appropriate avenue to do that. Perhaps, an MPH program and then working with an NGO like Doctors w/o Borders would be an opportunity. There is a need for intelligent people to help nations and communities in need develop health systems and prevention efforts to improve health worldwide. Maybe you can find something like that that fits your background. Another option would be to to microfinancing somewhere since you already have that background.

 

[Mad Jack]

Thank you in advance for any constructive feedback and I request you only reply if you have direct evidence/examples that can help make my decision.

I went to a top Ivy League university, graduated with a near 4.0, and had a sterling business career which went down in flames due to insider trading. Insider trading is a federal felony, not a misdemeanor. I am quite sorry this all happened. It is & was inexcusable and tragic.

I am trying to resuscitate my life and earlier in my life worked in health care where I had tremendous respect for the doctors I worked with. Medicine is a noble career & since I am financially secure, my hope is to work with Doctors without Borders and in impoverished areas where I can make the greatest impact/difference without concern for maximizing compensation.

Though I am in my thirties, I started the preparation to take pre-reqs so that I can apply to medical & dental school.

The more I read I realize my efforts might be futile, because I might automatically be 'dinged' for the scarlet letter of a 'Felony'. Does anyone have advice (informed by concrete knowledge)?

I understand that many may stop at the word 'felony'. However, insider trading is a very odd crime. I was caught up in something much larger than me, and like most situations, things aren't exactly how they seem. Insider trading is also a non-violent & arguably victimless offense.

I see what happened as a chance to turn my life around - I had wanted to for years but the compensation on Wall Street kept pulling me further deeper into an abyss of moral relativity.

Thank you.

I knew a guy who was busted at 18 while driving through a school zone with a small amount of pot that was obviously for personal consumption that ended up getting charged with a felony because he was pulled over in the wrong place. He had trouble getting licensed. It took a lawyer and a year of fighting, along with piles of people to vouch for his character. I'd imagine something as serious and willful as insider trading that was committed as an adult would make the process of getting licensed extremely difficult. If a school would even take you, which will be a mountain to climb in and of itself.

 

[SunsFun]

Fine, then, I'd change it to, "I very much doubt that you could cite evidence for the apparent claim that a different legal or moral standard exists for Ivy League graduates."

I still don't follow. Why would the fact that he/she is an Ivy alum cause me to raise the threshold of moral expectation for a guilty person? This suggests that of two guilty people, the person who went to Brown would be held to a higher standard in the eyes of the public - and presumably treated more harshly by an AdCom as the situation is here - than someone who went to Florida State?

Please correct me if I misunderstand your claim. Thanks.

I think I misspoke. By no means to I suggest that someone with 4.0 from Harvard should be held to a higher standard than a 3.5 from Florida State. I was trying to say that OP, being of such an elite background, comparing to the rest of the normal people cannot blame the system as much for being put in a situation with a thin line between what's immoral and what is expected. Someone who grew up in a ghetto with no parents and drug dealers as role models is seen, at least by some, as being forced to do something illegal because of circumstances. OP was in the position of affluence, power, and opportunity. It is not a big stretch to presume that he should have known better than being a part of a toxic environment to begin with. You would expect someone with those credentials to be able to see right from wrong a little better. I know this may be a little extreme but still valid to illustrate my point. This is all my opinion though, maybe I am being a little too harsh on him and should see how the malignant system can corrupt even the brightest ones.

 

[Ace-Co-A]

I think I misspoke. By no means to I suggest that someone with 4.0 from Harvard should be held to a higher standard than a 3.5 from Florida State. I was trying to say that OP, being of such an elite background, comparing to the rest of the normal people cannot blame the system as much for being put in a situation with a thin line between what's immoral and what is expected. Someone who grew up in a ghetto with no parents and drug dealers as role models is seen, at least by some, as being forced to do something illegal because of circumstances. OP was in the position of affluence, power, and opportunity. It is not a big stretch to presume that he should have known better than being a part of a toxic environment to begin with. You would expect someone with those credentials to be able to see right from wrong a little better. I know this may be a little extreme but still valid to illustrate my point. This is all my opinion though, maybe I am being a little too harsh on him and should see how the malignant system can corrupt even the brightest ones.

Ok, thanks for clarifying. I understand what you're getting at, now, and it's substantially less controversial than I thought at first. I'll rephrase it as I understand your statements:

An education, we presume, should indicate that the OP was well informed about the choices he/she made to get into the situation. However, if an uneducated person had been found in an analogous situation, ignorance of circumstance might be a more appropriate defense and therefore the public perception might be more lenient for the uneducated offender than the educated one.

Fair enough. I maintain that the "Ivy League" tag you used initially was misleading, but I apologize for misinterpreting your comments. I'm also not sure that the claim that we would "expect someone with those credentials to be able to see right from wrong a little better" is a good assumption. However, it is a side discussion that is not of primary interest to this thread, so I recommend that we leave it at that.