Confessions of a Wall Street Insider

Although he was a suburban husband and father, living a far different life than the “Wolf of Wall Street,” Michael Kimelman had a good run as the cofounder of a hedge fund. He had left a cushy yet suffocating job at a law firm to try his hand at the high-risk life of a proprietary trader — and he did pretty well for himself. But it all came crashing down in the wee hours of November 5, 2009, when the Feds came to his door—almost taking the door off its hinges. While his wife and children were sequestered to a bedroom, Kimelman was marched off in embarrassment in view of his neighbors and TV crews who had been alerted in advance. He was arrested as part of a huge insider trading case, and while he was offered a “sweetheart” no-jail probation plea, he refused, maintaining his innocence.

The lion’s share of Confessions of a Wall Street Insider was written while Kimelman was an inmate at Lewisburg Penitentiary. In nearly two years behind bars, he reflected on his experiences before incarceration—rubbing elbows and throwing back far too many cocktails with financial titans and major figures in sports and entertainment (including Leonardo DiCaprio, Alex Rodriguez, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan, to drop a few names); making and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in daily gambles on the Street; getting involved with the wrong people, who eventually turned on him; realizing that none of that mattered in the end. As he writes: “Stripped of family, friends, time, and humanity, if there’s ever a place to give one pause, it’s prison . . . Tomorrow is promised to no one.” In Confessions of a Wall Street Insider, he reveals the triumphs, pains, and struggles, and how, in the end, it just might have made him a better person.

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Michael Kimelman is a graduate of Lafayette College and the University of Southern California Law School. Formerly an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell, he was the Founder & Managing Partner of Incremental Capital, a New York based hedge fund with over $250 million in assets, which closed shortly after his arrest. A serial entrepreneur, he is currently consulting and launching new ventures in the culinary, retail, and entertainment spaces. He actively volunteers his time to several causes, including prison and education reform. He lives in Mamaroneck, New York.

“When prosecutors place a political agenda and career ambition over truth and justice, people inevitably get trampled. Michael Kimelman is a perfect example of that collateral damage.” – Joe Tacopina, celebrity criminal defense lawyer and owner of the Venezia FC Futbol team

“Kimelman is guilty of one thing: writing a helluva book. If you want a front row seat to a Wall Street witch-hunt – read this.” - Turney Duff, bestselling author of The Buy Side

“Kimelman delivers a taut page-turner that gives readers an inside seat at the real life Billions that are a daily part of the cutthroat world of proprietary traders. He also exposes a criminal justice system in which prosecutors will do anything to win a case and questions of innocence are far less important than notching a victory. In this disturbing and cautionary tale from the inner sanctums of Wall Street to Federal prison, Kimelman ultimately tells a singular and riveting tale of survival and endurance.” - Gerald Posner, author of God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

“Kimelman’s account as a defendant in the federal criminal justice system provides insights into just how broken and frightening that system has become.” – Walt Pavlo, Jr., Forbes columnist and co-author of Stolen Without a Gun

"If you like wild rides, you'll love Confessions of a Wall Street Insider, Michael Kimelman's gripping, well-written, memoir of his incredible journey from an associate at the tony law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to the lunacy of day trading, and into the great beyond of Wall Street hedge funds. When he's arrested for insider trading in 2009, the adventure really begins." - William D. Cohan, best-selling author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.

"As most media outlets touted Bharara's record of wins and losses, few looked into the tactics used to win a number of these cases. Now, Michael Kimelman gives us a view of what it was like.... If you work on Wall Street, you owe it to yourself to take a read about the risks you take on when you go to work each day. If you don’t work on Wall Street you owe it to yourself to be informed." - Forbes