Disney insider sentenced to house arrest

0

A love-struck former Walt Disney Company administrative assistant won’t have to spend time behind bars for her role in an insider trading scheme, but Bonnie Hoxie will be on probation for three years, including four months of home detention. Of course, she long ago lost her job.


A federal judge in Manhattan gave Hoxie a much lighter sentence than her former boyfriend, Yonnie Sebbag, who tried to sell non-public Disney financial information to people he believed were hedge fund operators. They were actually FBI agents. Both Hoxie and Sebbag had pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and Sebbag was recently sentenced to 27 months in federal prison and likely faces deportation to his native Morocco afterward.

Hoxie, who told the court she was “blindsided by love,” received the much lighter sentence because she was unaware of the extent of Sebbag’s plotting. Her attorney told the court that she believed he was going to invest based on the information. She had hoped to receive a designer purse and shoes from her beau.

Hoxie had been administrative assistant to Zenia Muncha, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications, at Disney. Hoxie and Sebbag were arrested in May 2010 after Sebbag delivered to the FBI agents a confidential document detailing Disney’s quarterly financial results three days before they were made public. He collected $15,000 and agreed to provide similar information for a share of trading profits.