U. grad's guilty plea jades Wharton image

Wharton students are used to hearing -- and trying to combat -- the stereotype of the Wharton student's single-minded, no-holds-barred obsession with making money. A 1988 Wharton graduate's guilty plea on Tuesday to federal charges of insider trading will do nothing to diminish those views, which the likes of Michael Milken and Donald Trump have helped to create. Darrin Gleeman, who graduated in 1988 with a degree in finance, pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges that he and a boyhood friend traded on inside information. He faces up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. "I think he's just another person giving the Wharton School a bad name," Wharton junior Karyn Smith said last night. "You're hearing that Wharton has all these back-stabbing, money-hungry people you can't trust, and he's one of those people." But one Wharton student, freshman Jack Friend, said last night that although insider trading is wrong, it could have been worse. "I think most people are going to forget about the whole thing," he said. "It's not like two Wharton guys went out and murdered 20 people. All they did was some fraud." Several students and one professor said last night that some people might conclude, unfairly, that Gleeman's case is a reflection of what students learn at Wharton. But they added that they did not think the case would diminish Wharton's excellent reputation among employers in corporate America. Wharton senior Stacy Wrubel said the case "obviously reflects poorly on Wharton," but added that "maybe it's just the Wharton name that happens to pop up because it's one of the nation's top business schools." "I certainly hope [Gleeman is] an aberration," Finance Professor Jack Guttentag said. "We graduate a lot of students and I guess you have to figure that a few of them are going to lose their way." "I don't think there's anything in the Wharton experience that leads people to cross the line, but of course Wharton students have the opportunity to do that because they take those kinds of [corporate] positions often times," he added. On Tuesday, Wharton Vice Dean Janice Bellace was quick to point out that under the school's revised undergradauate curriculum, students have to take two courses in "societal environment," one of which may be a course on ethics. Several students said last night they think that by requiring such courses, Wharton is doing all it can to ensure that students act ethically and lawfully once they enter the business world. U.S. Attorney Otto Obermaier said Tuesday that Gleeman, 26, began his scheme by studying newspaper articles and library materials in 1989 about unsuccessful insider trading schemes. He said Gleeman later convinced his friend, Harvard University graduate Christopher Garvey, to get a job at a New York law firm so that he could learn information that would help the two men profit from stock transactions. Obermaier announced the charges last week, saying the men made more than $340,000 in at least 15 deals. The prosecutor said Gleeman also recruited his father, Seymour, 59, to assist in the scam because he was someone "who could inconspicuously travel abroad to open foreign trading accounts." The elder Seymour faces criminal charges, including securities fraud.

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