Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications, disputes court decision that says he knowingly unloaded shares of company stock before dot-com bust Former Qwest Communications CEO Joseph Nacchio has appealed his insider-trading conviction, arguing that he didn’t have any internal warning that Qwest would miss its financial targets for 2001.In April, Nacchio was convicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on 19 counts of insider trading involving stock sales he made in 2001. In July, he was sentenced to six years in prison, a $19 million fine, and a forfeiture of about $52 million in gains from the stock sales. Nacchio’s attorneys filed an appeal Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Denver.A telecommunications bubble based on overly optimistic forecasts of Internet demand burst early in this decade, and Qwest’s shares plummeted along with many others. Nacchio, who was CEO from 1997 to 2002, was accused of unloading his own Qwest shares while forecasting aggressive growth for the company. He and other executives were also accused of misrepresenting one-time sales of network capacity as ongoing revenue sources. Along with former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers, Nacchio became a symbol of telecommunications greed. In its opening brief on the appeal, Nacchio’s lawyers claim he was made the scapegoat for a crash that cost Qwest investors and employees dearly. He had announced six months in advance that he would sell his shares as part of a compensation plan, and he never had any inside information that the company’s results would fall drastically short, the argument says. It alleges, among other things, there was insufficient evidence and the district court ignored established case law and left out important jury instructions in the trial.Arguments in the case are scheduled for Dec. 18. Technology Industry