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,[3] at Kidder, Peabody & Co., an old-line brokerage firm.
Winans' conviction for violating securities law was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 as Carpenter v. United States (1987) by a rare 4–4 deadlocked vote.
[citation needed] Winans's case included two co-defendants and reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 as Carpenter v. United States, where the conviction was affirmed by a rare 4–4 deadlock.
In 1999, he founded a nonprofit writers resource center in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and ran it for six years before returning to writing and producing books.
"[9] He is now the President and Chief Creative Officer of Winans Kuenstler Publishing, which claims to be involved in "Ghost Writing, Production, Distribution, and Marketing of Books That Make a Difference by Authors with Fresh Ideas.