Anthony Elgindy

Anthony Elgindy (November 28, 1967 – July 23, 2015), was an American stock broker and financial commentator who founded Pacific Equity Investigations. Elgindy gained a reputation for his "investigations" of companies. Towards the end of his life, Elgindy was convicted of insider trading and served seven years in federal prison.

Born in Egypt as Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, Elgindy was known professionally as "Anthony@Pacific", the "Internet's most theatrical short-seller".

Early life and education Elgindy was born in Egypt as Amr Ibrahim Elgindy and moved with his family to suburban Chicago as a young child. His father was a professor and his mother a pediatrician. He left high school without graduating and obtained an equivalency certificate in 1985, then studied biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California and biology at San Diego State University, completing less than two years of coursework. In 1986, at the age of 18, he was arrested in Los Angeles on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon; the charge was later dropped. < By the late 1990s he had recast himself publicly as a short seller who exposed fraudulent companies, and was profiled in Business Week and Wired and featured on the Discovery Channel program Justice Files. An investigation uncovered his relationship with Royer, who resigned and began working directly for Elgindy. Royer's girlfriend, FBI agent Lynn Wingate, continuing to funnel information to Elgindy. In 2004, the SEC reversed the ban on appeal.

In a superseding indictment issued in January 2005, Elgindy was charged with racketeering, securities fraud and other crimes. This included his scheme to steal information about FBI and separate SEC investigations of various companies. After a four-month trial, Elgindy was convicted of insider trading in five stocks with illegal gains totaling about $66,000.

Elgindy was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. He was released in late 2013 after serving almost seven years. He committed suicide on July 23, 2015.