The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition last week, Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at Wall Street hedge fund SAC Capital Advisers, was slapped with a nine-year prison sentence by a U.S. District judge in New York for passing along inside information from doctors involved in Alzheimer's drug trials at two pharmaceutical companies. The Post's Theresa Tedesco writes the tip proved valuable as it helped SAC book profits and avoid losses of about $276-million (U.S.) from illegal trades. The nine-year prison term imposed by the judge (federal sentencing guidelines recommend 15 to 20 years) has tongues wagging in some U.S. quarters that perhaps the punishment of some financial malfeasance may be going too far. There is a dearth of class-action lawsuits associated with insider-trading scandals. Much of the justification for vigorously pursuing and punishing insider trading in the U.S. and Canada is based on the much vaguer notion that it compromises the integrity of the capital markets. "It seems like insider trading is a victimless crime, but it is not," argues Utpal Bhattacharya at the University of Indiana. "It decreases the confidence of the general public in the market."