A federal judge in California last week declared a mistrial after a jury deadlocked over the insider trading charges leveled against former Advanced Medical Optics CEO James Mazzo.
The jury convicted former Orioles player Doug DeCinces and friend and a business associate on charges of tender offer fraud, but deadlocked on some of the charges against DeCinces and all of the charges against Mazzo, prompting Judge Andrew Guilford to declare a mistrial in Mazzo’s case.
Mazzo, now global ophthalmology president at Carl Zeiss Meditec (ETR:AFX) after a 3-year run as president and CEO at AcuFocus, had argued that there is “no evidence” of him “lying, cheating, or hiding anything.”
Federal prosecutors in 2014 accused Mazzo of tipping close friend and neighbor DeCinces about Abbott‘s (NYSE:ABT) $2.8 billion acquisition of Advanced Medical Optics in 2009. DeCinces allegedly passed the information on to former teammate Eddie Murray. (Murray later agreed to settle his case for $358,000 but admitted no wrongdoing.) DeCinces agreed in 2011 to pony up $2.5 million (but admitted no guilt) to settle similar charges leveled by the SEC.
The verdict was confirmed by the U.S. District Court for Central California by a spokesman for Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown, according to Reuters.
DeCinces plans to file a motion for a new trial, his lawyer told the news service. Lawyers for Mazzo declined to comment, Reuters reported.
