Former Goldman Sachs analyst may have fled country

David Pajcin, who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison and has cooperated with prosecutors in the case, has violated his parole and is believed by prosecutors to have fled, according to a letter submitted to the federal court in Manhattan by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Jesse Siegel, an attorney in New York who had represented Pajcin, said he hadn't spoken to him since January when he was sentenced and didn't know where he was.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he was out of the country, but I have no idea where he is," Siegel said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

The insider-trading plot involved illegal tips from a grand juror, leaked copies of a market-moving column in BusinessWeek magazine and a plan for strippers to coax secrets from investment bankers, prosecutors say.

They said that from 2003 to 2005, a man who served on a New Jersey grand jury investigating accounting-fraud accusations against drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and several of its executives leaked information to Pajcin, who was a former high school friend. Prosecutors said Pajcin then teamed with Eugene Plotkin, another analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to trade on the information and tip others to trade in Bristol-Myers securities.

Pajcin and Plotkin pocketed more than $6.7 million through illegal inside trades, according to the authorities.

Pajcin, 31, was sentenced in January to time served--about two years at that point--as well as three years of supervised release.

The probation office asked the judge in the case for an arrest warrant against Pajcin, which was issued in April, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney in Manhattan Michael Garcia confirmed Wednesday. The spokeswoman, Janice Oh, declined further comment.

A spokesman for the SEC had no immediate comment Wednesday afternoon.