Dentist and son jailed for insider share scam

A dentist with an interest in investing in shares and his work experience son were jailed for two years and one year respectively today for a £110,000 insider trading scam.

Neel Uberoi, 62, and Matthew Uberoi, 24, were told by Judge Peter Testar at London's Southwark Crown Court: "It's cheating, and it's important for the economic and social wellbeing of the community that there should be clean markets, and the public rightly recoils from the idea of people treating the possession of inside information as a licence to print money."

Their trial heard that Matthew Uberoi, of Fulham, south-west London, was on a placement scheme with brokers Hoare Govett while using coded messages about Chinese food to feed his father secret takeover tips.

The information was then used to make a stream of lucrative but forbidden stock deals, the first of which racked up a profit of up to £101,000.

As the days and weeks passed, the business administration undergraduate gave his father, of Kenley, Surrey, two more pieces of information, netting just under £9,000.

The jury convicted them of 12 counts of insider trading between June and August 2006.

Six centred on 18,000 shares in Neutec Pharma Plc, one concerned 50,000 shares in Birse Group Plc, while the remainder involved purchasing 90,000 Gulf Keystone Petroleum shares.

The pair were cleared of a further five insider trading counts.