The United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced  that the former Chief Executive Officer of Informix Corp., Phillip E. White, pled guilty today to securities fraud. 

In pleading guilty, Mr. White admitted that on July 16, 1997, while he was the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Informix Corp, he signed and Informix filed an SEC Form S-8 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, registering 12 million shares of company stock for distribution to Informix employees.  The Form S-8 incorporated Informix's 1996 financial statements by reference.  Mr. White admitted that at the time he signed the S-8 and caused it to be filed with the SEC, he knew that it was false and misleading with respect to the material fact that Informix's 1996 financial statements were not accurate, but rather should have been restated to reflect a material amount of revenue that should have been reversed. 

The sentencing of Mr. White is scheduled for March 24, 2004 before Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco.  The maximum statutory penalty for a violation of 15 U.S.C. § 77x is five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000.  However, the actual sentence will be dictated by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of factors, and will be imposed in the discretion of the Court.  The parties' plea agreement acknowledged that one factor affecting the sentence under the Guidelines, the amount of loss to shareholders from the violation, could not reasonably be estimated under the particular facts of the case.  The parties agreed that the sentence could therefore be as high as 12 months imprisonment.

The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office, in coordination with the SEC's Headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Another Informix officer, the company's Vice-President in charge of European operations Walter Königseder, was indicted by a federal Grand Jury in October 2000 for wire and securities fraud violations.  Königseder is a citizen and resident of Munich, Germany.  The United States has been unable to secure his extradition as a result of German law.  Patrick D. Robbins, who is Chief of the Securities Fraud Section, and Miles F. Ehrlich, who is Chief of the White Collar Section, are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys prosecuting the case, with the assistance of paralegal Linda Woo and legal assistants Katie Cannuli and Lori Lucchetti.