After being hired away from his career at Citibank in 1978, he joined Smith Barney's corporate finance department and worked in its Paris office specializing in mergers and acquisitions.

Over the last 30+ years, Levine has worked as a global strategist for innovative technology trends, focusing on controlled environment agriculture and sustainability, including food, water and energy systems.

Levine placed his trades through an account maintained under an assumed name at Bahamian subsidiaries of Swiss banks, using pay phones to prevent his calls from being traced.

Unable to pierce the veil of secrecy, Merrill Lynch forwarded the affair to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Due in part to this co-operation, federal judge Gerald Goettel imposed a lenient sentence of two years in prison and a $362,000 fine.

However, since Levine had been stripped of nearly all of his liquid assets by the SEC and IRS, Goettel did not "commit" the fines, meaning that he would not be held in contempt of court if he left prison without paying them.

He claimed that the government circumvented Bahamian law in order to obtain most of the evidence against him (even though he was guilty), including records of his phone calls.

However, he said, the possibility of additional charges in a superseding indictment—possibly including the powerful Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — and concern about the effects on his family led him to conclude this was a battle he could not win.

Levine recalled that his lawyer, Arthur Liman, told him that if he went to trial, he faced up to 20 years in prison if found guilty and the loss of everything he owned.

Well known market participants were soon caught up in the investigations, including Siegel, Boesky and the powerful Goldman Sachs senior partner and head of arbitrage Robert Freeman.

The investigations also indirectly led to Michael Milken who was highly influential in the junk bond market at the time.