John H Sturc

John H. Sturc, who helped spearhead the federal investigation into insider trading on Wall Street, is leaving the Securities and Exchange Commission and in May will become a partner in the Washington office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the Los Angeles-based law firm. Sturc, 39, has been an associate director of the SEC's enforcement division and was a principal supervisor on the investigations of Dennis B. Levine, Ivan F. Boesky, Martin Siegel and Drexel Burnham Lambert.

John H. Sturc, who helped spearhead the federal investigation into insider trading on Wall Street, is leaving the Securities and Exchange Commission and in May will become a partner in the Washington office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the Los Angeles-based law firm. Sturc, 39, has been an associate director of the SEC's enforcement division and was a principal supervisor on the investigations of Dennis B. Levine, Ivan F. Boesky, Martin Siegel and Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Insider trading is back with a vengeance. More than 10 years after the Securities and Exchange Commission's blockbuster case against Wall Street's most notorious insider traders--Dennis Levine, Ivan Boesky and Martin Siegel--the illicit practice of using tips from company insiders to make money on stocks is more popular than ever. "We have more insider trading investigations underway now than we ever had," said Thomas C. Newkirk, associate director of the SEC's division of enforcement.

Wall Street's insider trading travails mounted Thursday as a former Lazard Freres & Co. junior analyst was barred from the securities industry and his father, grandfather and a stockbroker agreed to give up more than $2 million in illicit profits that they are accused of having made on advance word of last year's multibillion-dollar acquisition of RCA by General Electric. The Securities and Exchange Commission also imposed a record $2.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday charged a top mergers specialist at the investment house of Drexel Burnham Lambert with making $12.6 million in illegal profits by trading stocks on inside information. The case against Dennis Levine, 33, is the biggest insider trading action ever brought by the SEC.

Former junk-bond king Michael Milken agreed Thursday to pay $47 million to settle new federal charges that he violated his lifetime ban from the securities business. The charges, contained in a lawsuit filed in New York by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, stem from corporate finance deals involving Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., MCI Communications Corp. and New World Communications Group.

The reverberations from Ivan F. Boesky's fall echoed along Wall Street on Monday as stocks subject to takeover rumors fell sharply on the New York Stock Exchange and participants in the business of takeover speculation pondered the future of their trade. Particularly hard hit were stocks on which trading had been based almost entirely on takeover rumor. Among these, Lockheed, which had risen $10.50 a share on Thursday and Friday, gave up $3 to close at $52.25; E. F.

Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., one of Wall Street's leading brokerage houses, and Michael Milken, head of its "junk bond" department, were accused of insider trading, stock market manipulation and defrauding the firm's clients in a massive lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 184-page suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, caps the most far-reaching insider trading investigation ever undertaken by the SEC.

Jack Nugent started the ball rolling by blabbing to Tom Peacock about his Washington lobbying firm's hot new client. Peacock passed the word to his stockbroker, Steve Tatusko. Tatusko invited nine guys in his brokerage office in on the deal. When an $8,700 stock option investment out of that office turned a $911,000 profit in four days, the Securities and Exchange Commission got very interested. And that was only one phase of what became the biggest insider trading case in history.