With One Crime, an Ex-Congressman Damaged Two Families

The elder Collins was forced to resign from office last year after being indicted in an insider-trading conspiracy that eventually led to a guilty plea and his sentencing last week to 26 months in prison.

But the true extent of the disgraced lawmaker’s downfall was perversely worse: The criminal conspiracy also swept up Cameron Collins and his future father-in-law.

At his sentencing last week, Chris Collins, 69, begged the judge to show his son mercy, placing the blame for his son’s role in the scheme on himself. He was the one, prosecutors said, who called his son in the summer of 2017 and, based on an insider tip, encouraged him to sell his shares in an Australian drug company.

“I have destroyed the reputation of our son, the light of my life,” he said at his sentencing. “The reason he is in that spot is me.”

Chris Collins did not attend his son’s sentencing Thursday, but his words appeared to have had a lasting effect.

In a surprise reprieve, Judge Vernon S. Broderick of U.S. District Court in Manhattan said he would not punish the son for his father’s sins: He sentenced Cameron Collins, 27, to five years’ probation and 500 hours of community service, sparing him any prison time.

Broderick determined that Cameron Collins would not be standing before him if his father had not placed that call, and that he deserved a chance to rebuild his reputation.

Although Collins is now a felon, “it should not define you and for the rest of your life,” the judge said, adding later, “I hope you recognize this is a tremendous break.”

Cameron Collins grew up outside Buffalo, New York, in a supportive and stable Catholic family, his lawyers wrote in a court filing. A champion gymnast in middle school, he traveled the country with his father to attend meets. Both were Eagle Scouts, a rank Cameron achieved in seventh grade, garnering local press coverage.

Letters filed to the court portrayed Chris Collins as a proud father who played a hands-on role in guiding his son. When Cameron Collins’ Boy Scout troop had to build new park benches, a family friend wrote, his father bought all the necessary materials and recruited his own friends to help the troop assemble the benches in his basement.

In 2015, the younger Collins graduated cum laude with a degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University. He and Lauren Zarsky, his future fiancée, met there in their freshman year. He amassed a net worth of more than $21 million, much of it in assets “apparently gifted to him by his father,” according to prosecutors.

Some of the wealth stemmed from successful businesses that his father had helped manage before being elected to represent New York’s 27th Congressional District in 2012. Chris Collins was also on the board of Innate Immunotherapeutics, a company that was developing a treatment for multiple sclerosis.

On June 22, 2017, while attending a picnic on the White House lawn, the elder Collins received an email from the company’s chief executive. An experimental multiple sclerosis drug that Innate was developing had failed the clinical trial, the email said.

Chris Collins was shocked. He had spent years promoting the company to his family, friends and colleagues as a promising investment. The news was sure to send the stock plummeting.

Collins called his son, who owned more than 5 million Innate shares, most of it bought by his father. In the six-minute call, Chris Collins told his son that he should try to sell the shares before the trial results became public.

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“He should have said no from the beginning,” a lawyer for Cameron Collins told Broderick on Thursday. “He should have stood up to his father.”

But he was shaken by how distraught his father sounded and wanted to make him feel better.

“He was my hero,” Cameron Collins said in court Thursday, his voice breaking through tears. “He always seemed to do the right thing, and I always trusted him.”

After getting the call from his father, he was torn for another reason: He knew that he would soon be proposing to Zarsky and that he had information that could help her parents. They were shareholders because of his encouragement.

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Zarsky’s father, Stephen, had put $143,900 — most of his retirement savings — into Innate shares, according to a court filing.

Collins said he feared what would happen to his relationship with Zarsky if her parents lost their money. He decided to tell them about the failed drug trial. He let them start selling their shares first and agreed to stagger his own selling to avoid depressing the stock’s price before everyone else sold.

The tip spread quickly from there. Cameron Collins shared it with a friend. Zarsky’s father told his brother and another friend. Many of those involved were able to sell their shares before the trial results became public. Innate shares dropped 92% after that.

Collins avoided losing $571,000 as a result of his father’s tip. He owned such a large chunk of Innate shares that he had to unload them in dozens of trades over several days.

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Months later, when FBI agents knocked on their doors, both Chris and Cameron Collins lied to them. It was a coordinated effort to cover up their crime, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the illegal trading had been motivated by greed, and they pointed out that neither man needed the money. Cameron Collins and his father had tens of millions of dollars in assets between them. Their lawyers called it an impulsive decision in a moment of weakness.

Despite the ordeal, Cameron Collins did not seem resentful. On Thursday, he said he thought his father had good intentions and was just trying to protect him.

Now, though, Collins will have to deal with a felony conviction and its effect on his future.

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Although they were not criminally charged, Zarsky and her mother had to settle civil charges with regulators.

Zarsky, a certified public accountant, was also barred from practicing as an accountant for at least five years. Her father received no prison time and was sentenced to four years’ probation.

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On Thursday, Zarsky sat in the courtroom with Collins’ sister and mother, all of them wiping away tears as he spoke. She and Collins have said they still plan to get married.

“There is no one other than Cameron who I would rather spend my life with,” Zarsky wrote in a letter to the judge. “I so look forward to the day when I can finally call him my dearly beloved husband. I pray that day will be soon.”

That day may come sooner than she expected. The sentence includes a period of home confinement, but Broderick said he would delay its start depending on the couple’s wedding date.

He suggested that they would need to start planning soon: Collins’ father is scheduled to report to prison in March.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .