A former Fiserv Securities employee has been sentenced to a year and a day in jail for helping a hedge fund make market timing trades in mutual funds.

Thomas Gerbasio helped Beacon Rock Capital make more than 26,000 market timing trades in mutual funds from December 1999 through November 2003 that netted $2.4 million in trading gains. From 1999 to 2002 Gerbasio was an employee of Investec Ernst & Co. In August of 2002 he joined Fiserv Securities based in Philadelphia where he continued to assist the hedge fund in making timing trades.

Along with the one year sentence, the court also ordered Gerbasio to pay a $7,500 fine.

The criminal case against Gerbasio and Beacon Rock was filed in March (see complaint). He plead guilty as did Beacon Rock, which was sentenced to three years probation and fines and forfeiture totaling of more than $1 million.

Gerbasio is the first executive to be sentenced to prison time in relation to the mutual fund scandals since James Connelly Jr., a former vice chairman at Alger Funds, plead guilty to obstruction of justice charges in 2003. Connelly had told staffers to erase emails after obtaining a subpoena request from then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office. 

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