Former congressman sentenced to nearly 2 years in prison for insider trading

A former Republican lawmaker who served in Congress for nearly two decades was sentenced Tuesday to almost two years in prison over insider trading charges.

Former Rep. Stephen Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison stemming from four counts of securities fraud related to a pair of insider trading schemes in 2018 and 2019.

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman for the Southern District of New York. It was less than the 36 months imprisonment requested by prosecutors.

Buyer, 64, was first elected to Congress in 1993. He left in 2011 to work as a consultant to private companies.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said that Buyer "abused positions of trust for illicit personal gain, and today he faced justice for those acts."

According to the indictment, Buyer “misappropriated material non-public information” that he learned as a consultant and used that information to “place timely, profitable securities trades in brokerage accounts in his own name and the names of others.”

Prosecutors said that Buyer bought shares of Sprint stock, ahead of its $26.5 billion merger announcement with T-Mobile in 2018. In a separate scheme in 2019, they alleged that he also traded shares of Navigant Consulting Inc. before it was acquired by Guidehouse, a consulting and advisory firm.

Buyer made more than $126,000 from buying and later selling Sprint stock and made more than $223,000 from the Navigant trades, according to the indictment.

Buyer's lawyer said that the former congressman would appeal.

“Steve is disappointed in the sentence, but we look forward to the appeal,” Daniel Alonso said in a statement. “The best way to understand who Steve Buyer is is to read the defense’s publicly filed sentencing memorandum and the dozens of letters sent to Judge Berman on his behalf.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com