R. Foster Winans

Who is R. Foster Winans?

R. Foster Winans is a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal who co-wrote the "Heard on the Street Column" from 1982 to 1984 and was convicted of insider trading and mail fraud. He was indicted by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani and convicted in 1985 of violating Federal law by leaking advance word of the contents of his columns to a stockbroker, Peter N. Brant, at Kidder, Peabody & Co., an old-line brokerage firm. Brant was decades later labeled a recidivist by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Winans' conviction for violating securities law was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 as Carpenter v. United States by a rare 4–4 deadlocked vote. The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed his convictions for committing federal mail and wire fraud, however. He served nine months in federal prison.