On Monday, the House Republican resigned his congressional seat ahead of the expected plea.
U.S. Rep. Chris Collins is expected to plead guilty to charges of insider trading one year after the former member of the Innate Immunotherapeutics Board of Directors was indicted. On Monday, the House Republican resigned his congressional seat ahead of the expected plea.
Collins, along with his son Cameron and another man, was indicted on the charges in August 2018. The government charged Collins, a New York Republican, used the information he learned from his time on the board to help his son make timely trades. Following the charges against Collins and the others, Innate changed its name to Amplia Therapeutics as part of a “branding refresh” to show the company’s focus on the “development of a pipeline of Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) inhibitors for cancer and fibrosis.”
Collins is expected in court today and, according to multiple reports including the Los Angeles Times, will plead guilty to at least some of the pending charges. Collins faces seven counts of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and making false statements. According to the indictment, Collins “passed nonpublic information” about Innate’s drug trials to his son in order to help him “make timely trades in Innate stock and tip others.” Specifically, the indictment pointed to a 2017 trial failure that caused company stock to plunge about 90% in one day. Collins was reported to have lost about $16 million, with his holdings having been pegged at being worth about $45.5 million at the time. While Collins himself didn’t unload stock ahead of the public reveal, which he knew about due to a call from Innate’s chief executive officer, the indictment said Collins informed his son and the other man of the failure. That allowed them to sell their shares ahead of the 90% fall and avoid about $800,000 in losses. Collins’ son Cameron was accused of passing along the information about the stock to his fiancée’s father. Cameron Collins and Stephen Zarsky were also indicted. Cameron Collins is expected to enter a plea on Thursday, the Times reported.
It is unknown if Collins plans to plead guilty to some or all of these charges. Following the indictment last year, Collins turned himself in to the government. As BioSpace reported at the time, Collins’ defense team promised a “vigorous defense” and said the indictment did not suggest that Collins himself traded Innate stocks. With a 17% stake in Innate, Collins was the largest shareholder of the company. Combined with investments made by his family that control jumped to about 21%.
During his time on Innate’s board of directors, Collins was known to urge members of his caucus and circle of friends to invest in Innate. In 2017 it was reported that Collins bragged about how many millionaires he had made of people due to their investments in Innate. Among those was former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who was grilled over his stock holdings during his confirmation hearings. Price, who later resigned from HHS over his own controversial decisions, sold his shares of Innate prior to being sworn in as HHS Secretary due to potential conflicts of interest.
