Stephen Buyer

Stephen Buyer, a Republican who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2011, faced an ethics investigation in 2010 regarding his nonprofit, the Frontier Foundation. The probe examined allegations that he abused the charity for private purposes, including providing a job for his son and failing to award promised scholarships, which led him to announce his retirement from Congress. Following his time in office, Buyer was convicted in 2023 on four counts of securities fraud. Prosecutors demonstrated that he misappropriated material nonpublic information gained through his post-congressional consulting work to conduct illegal insider trading. Specifically, Buyer profited from trading Sprint stock ahead of its 2018 merger with T-Mobile and Navigant Consulting stock ahead of its 2019 acquisition by Guidehouse. He used seven different accounts to execute these trades and attempted to conceal his actions by providing false information to investigators. Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison, ordered to pay $354,027.72 in forfeiture, and his conviction was affirmed on appeal.