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Former Monster lawyer pleads guilty over options

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Feb 15, 20071 min

The job recruitment company's former general counsel is the latest to be sentenced for backdating stock options

Monster Worldwide’s former general counsel pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, another executive caught up in the stock options backdating scandal.

Myron Olesnyckyj faced charges of securities fraud and conspiracy in connection with the backdating of millions of dollars’ worth of employee stock option grants at the online recruitment services company. Olesnyckyj appeared before U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain.

According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York, Olesnyckyj “conspired with other former senior executives at Monster to systematically backdate stock option grants to Monster employees in an effort to fraudulently suppress Monster’s compensation expenses and falsely inflate its earnings and share price. As a result, Monster’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission between 1997 and 2005 fraudulently understated the company’s compensation expenses and inflated its earnings by over 300 million dollars.”

The names of Olesnyckyj’s alleged co-conspirators were not immediately disclosed.