Today the winners of Lawyer of the Day honors are obvious. Congratulations to Arthur Cutillo, Michael Kimelman, and Jason Goldbfarb, three attorneys who stand accused of involvement in the infamous Galleon Group insider trading scheme.

Both Cutillo and Kimelman have distinguished pedigrees, with ties to two top firms. Cutillo (left), a holder of an M.S. in chemical engineering as well as a J.D. (both from Villanova), was an associate at the white-shoe firm of Ropes & Gray. Kimelman (right), a partner at Incremental Capital LLC, once worked as an associate at super-prestigious Sullivan & Cromwell. Check out Cutillo’s firm bio and Kimelman’s LinkedIn profile over here.

The third charged lawyer, Jason Goldfarb, apparently worked as a personal injury lawyer in Brooklyn. He allegedly served as a conduit of information between Cutillo and Zvi Goffer — the former Galleon employee apparently referred to as “Octopussy” at the SEC, because “he had his arms in so many insider” trading schemes.

More on our three honorees, after the jump.

The news was first reported by CNBC. See Dealbreaker for more details.

We have phone calls and emails in to Ropes & Gray and are waiting to hear back. We will keep you posted on further developments.

If you have more info, please email us. Thanks.

UPDATE (10:00 AM): According to Bloomberg, the FBI has arrested Arthur Cutillo (pictured). He is no longer on the Ropes & Gray website, but you can find his bio via Google Cache. Interestingly enough, he was an IP litigator, not a corporate attorney.

CNBC is now reporting that a Ropes & Gray employee allegedly provided inside information about various “going private” transactions the firm was involved in. Some of these transactions apparently involved companies heavily dependent upon intellectual property, such as technology companies.

UPDATE (10:10 AM): In case the Google Cache entry is removed, we have posted Arthur Cutillo’s bio after the jump. He graduated from Rutgers (undergrad) and Villanova (law), and he worked at Merck before joining Ropes.

UPDATE (10:15 AM): Here is a statement from Ropes & Gray:

We are deeply disappointed to learn about this situation, which suggests an extreme breach of this person’s duty of trust to our clients and to the firm. We cannot comment in detail on an ongoing investigation but we are moving quickly to protect our clients and are cooperating fully with authorities.

UPDATE (12:15 PM): U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara (S.D.N.Y.) is giving a press conference discussing the charges. One of the other individuals charged, Michael Kimelman, once worked as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.

UPDATE (4:30 PM): We’ve honored Artie Cutillo, Michael Kimelman, and a third lawyer, Jason Goldfarb, as our Lawyers of the Day.

Art Cutillo’s Ropes bio and Mike Kimelman’s LinkedIn profile, after the jump.

Seven Arrested In Insider Trading Case [Dealbreaker]

Eric Holzer is was a tax attorney at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP. But he’s been caught up in a $4.8 million insider trading scheme along with a bunch of day traders, a1994 Playboy Playmate; and Lee Corbin, a partner at Kurzman Eisenberg Corbin & Lever LLP, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription).

(Corbin is being spared the ignominy of Lawyer of the Day, as he is only a “relief defendant” in the case. He is not charged with wrongdoing, but is being sued for ill-gotten gains as he acted on the advice of his son, one of the day traders.)

Sadly, Holzer threw his career away for just a little more than one year of a junior Biglaw associate salary. From the SEC press release:

Eric Holzer, age 34, Devlin’s friend and a tax associate in the New York City office of an international law firm, traded in at least three of the transactions. Holzer reaped profits of $175,000 in his own accounts and two accounts controlled by his father. Holzer gave Devlin cash, some of which came from shares he had his father buy on Devlin’s behalf.

According to The New York Law Journal, the scheme was led by Matt Devlin, a Lehman Brothers rep whose wife was a Brunswick Group partner. He referred to her as a “golden goose” and used information gleaned from her work to advise his friends on investments. When Devlin got caught, he helped bring his friends down.

More after the jump.

* The White House has raised the prospect of “pushing the cars into a managed bankruptcy as a solution to save the companies from financial collapse.” [The International Herald Tribune]

* The Iraqi journalist who threw the shoe at President George W. Bush will go on trial for insulting a foreign leader, which could get him up to two years in prison. Another case may be brought against the people who beat him after the incident. [The Associated Press]

* “Deep Throat” W. Mark Felt Sr., the second highest official in the FBI during Watergate, and the famous anonymous source who led journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein through the “crimes and coverups” of Richard Nixon died yesterday at 95. [The Washington Post]

* The 9th Circuit ruled that the U.S. courts might not be the appropriate place for Papua New Guinea citizens to sue British mining company Rio Tinto for inciting a “savage” ten- year civil war. [Courthouse News Service]

* A California jury acquitted surgeon Dr. Hootan Roozokh, who was accused of trying to accelerate an organ donor’s death. [The Los Angeles Times]

* Remember DC Judge Roy Pearson’s pants suit? The D.C. Court of Appeals rejected it yesterday…no surprise there. [The Associated Press]

* First there was the recession, then there were the bankruptcy’s, followed by the lay-offs, and now here are the scandals. The DOJ charged four people in an insider trading scheme incolving a Lehman broker.[CNN]

Law-related stories are proliferating over at our big sibling site, DealBreaker. Here are three from yesterday afternoon alone:

1. Goldman Sachs Acquitted of All Charges. It’s good to be Goldman:

“In an effort to uphold the rule that the Masters of the Universe can pretty much get away with anything simply because they’re the Masters of the Universe (see, also: Jobs, backdating), a federal judge has ruled that Goldman cannot be included in a lawsuit by Fannie Mae shareholders.”

2. Dow Jones Insider Trading Watch: Two Charges, Dow Jones Director Scutinized. Hmm, this sounds a wee bit fishy to us:

“[T]he SEC filed a lawsuit against a Hong Kong couple, Kan King Wong and Charlotte Ka On Wong Leung, accusing them of insider trading. The couple had purchased $15 million of Dow Jones shares prior to the May 1st announcement.”

They liquidated the position after News Corp.’s unsolicited offer to boy Dow Jones, for a tidy profit of $8.2 million. More details here.

3. In the Future of a Defamation Lawsuit, Dimon Is the Law. Here’s a teaser, concerning the lawsuits that are flying between Dow Chemical and a former executive and board member: “It’s the legal equivalent of a John Woo action scene.”

You can check out the full post here.

Via our financially-minded big sibling, Dealbreaker, we just learned about an interesting (and bizarre) insider trading case. It’s about a family that set up its own hedge fund in order to trade on insider information.

And as it turns out, a friend of ours appears to be involved. From today’s CCH Wall Street:

The SEC has charged an entire family and two associates with conducting an insider trading scheme that illegally created more than $3.7 million in profits.

The Commission has charged Zvi Rosenthal of Tenafly, New Jersey, and former Vice President of Israeli-based Taro Pharmaceuticals with providing nonpublic information regarding pending FDA drug approvals and earnings statements to his sons.

The SEC has also charged the sons, Amir Rosenthal, 29, and Ayal Rosenthal, 26, both of New York, New York, and Oren Rosenthal, 31, of Los Angeles, California. It has also charged Amir Rosenthal with providing the nonpublic information to his father-in-law, Bahram Delshad, his work supervisor, Young Kim, and his best friend, David Heyman.

All of the defendants allegedly used the tip-offs to illegally trade ahead of eight Taro earnings announcements and five FDA drug approval announcements from at least 2001 through 2005, the SEC charged.

As noted by Best In Class, several of the defendants are Biglaw lawyers. Amir Rosenthal was an associate at Thacher Proffitt & Wood, where he worked in the Structured Finance Group under co-defendant Young Kim.

We don’t know Young Kim or Amir Rosenthal. But we do know Oren Rosenthal, who we can say from personal knowledge is a very nice, smart, and attractive fellow. He struck us as a truly decent person. We were shocked to see his name in the SEC press release.

(We met Oren when he was an associate in the New York office of O’Melveny & Myers; he subsequently relocated to the firm’s Los Angeles office. Oren’s bio has disappeared from the OMM website, but you can see it here via Google Cache. One irony is that Oren specialized in white collar criminal defense.)

In addition to the SEC proceedings, criminal cases have been brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Four of the seven SEC defendants were charged criminally, and those defendants — Zvi Rosenthal, his sons Ayal and Amir (the former TPW associate), and David Heyman — have pleaded guilty.

Random factoid: Amir Rosenthal is represented in the criminal proceedings by Paul Shechtman. Schechtman is a name partner at Stillman, Friedman & Shechtman — Charles Stillman’s firm, now representing Sullivan & Cromwell in the Brokeback Lawfirm matter.

Insider Trading: It’s A Family Affair! [DealBreaker]
The “Family Business” Built on Insider Trading [Best in Class / Garden City Group]
The Family That Trades on Inside Information Together Goes to Jail Together [White Collar Crime Prof Blog]
SEC Charges Family with Insider Trading Scheme [CCH Wall Street]
Former Thacher Proffitt Associate Admits Role in Insider Trading Scheme [New York Law Journal]
SEC Charges Family-Run Hedge Fund With a $3.7 Million Insider Trading Scheme [SEC.gov]

“No,” Daddy tried to explain, “it’s not THAT kind of blackberry…”

Photograph provided courtesy of a former Wachtell Lipton colleague of ours, Scott L. Black (whom we identify here with his permission; our default rule is anonymity for tipsters). Meet the absolutely adorable Shoshana Black, daughter of Scott and Marnie Black, a high-powered exec at MTV.

You may recall Scott Black from this recent Fortune magazine piece on the David Pajcin / Gene Plotkin insider trading scandal, which we highlighted in a previous post. Black, senior trial counsel at the SEC, nailed Pajcin in deposition questioning. Pajcin pleaded guilty to criminal charges and is now assisting the government with its investigation.

Partners in Crime: I-bankers, Insider Trades, Moles, Strippers… [Fortune]

Earlier: Non-Sequiturs: 09.22.06

* “Bless him Father, for he has sinned”: Msgr. John Woolsey made some unauthorized withdrawals from his church’s collection plate, which he blew on golf vacations and Rolex watches. (Monsignor: A Rolex is so unoriginal. Why not, say, a nice Patek Philippe?) [Judicial Reports]

* Newly confirmed Tenth Circuit judge Neil M. Gorsuch — a member of the Elect, former partner at the super-elite Kellogg Huber firm, and former Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General — has a new book out. It’s entitled The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. We have no idea what it says; but it was probably smart of him to get confirmed before it was published. [How Appealing]

* Planning a trip to Ireland? Law professor William Birdthistle has some recommendations for you. [Forbes]

* Gov. Jon Corzine’s picks for the New Jersey Supreme Court have cool names: James Zazzali, nominated to be the next Chief Justice, and Helen Hoens, nominated to fill Zazzali’s vacated seat. We support Judge Hoens’s nomination, ‘cause we’re suckers for alliteration. And assonance, too. [New York Times]

* This is a long and juicy article; we’ll probably blog more about it later. For now, some key terms to whet your appetite: insider trading, ballroom dancing, trips to Cuba, BMWs, strippers. Oh, and a forklift operator. Don’t forget the forklift operator. [Fortune via WSJ Law Blog]