Two years in jail and a $10,000 fine was the sentence meted out last week by a Federal court in Chicago to Esquire's publisher, David Smart, his brother Alfred and their broker Arthur Greene. The charge: milking the public of $1,325,000 by artificially rigging the price of Esquire-Coronet, Inc. stock (which rose from $7 to $12.25 while 153,000 shares were being distributed—TIME, May 12). Lighter-sentenced were four New York and Chicago brokers, three Esquire employes.
But the Esquire manipulators, pleading vagueness about the Securities & Exchange Act, got off lightly. They were told that jail sentences would be suspended if fines were...