Three former minor league baseball players who collectively netted about $189,000 in illegal profits from Jack in the Box’s acquisition of Del Taco in 2021 in an insider trading scheme will not have to do any prison time, a San Diego federal judge ruled during a sentencing hearing Friday.
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El Cajon native Jordan Qsar, 30, who played in the minor leagues for the Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies, admitted to using insider information he received in October 2021 from a former Pepperdine University baseball teammate who worked in finance at Jack in the Box, which is headquartered in San Diego, according to the plea agreement. He then tipped his Pepperdine teammate, Austin Bernard, 31, and Rays teammate Grant Witherspoon, 29, with the information, according to court filings.
Bernard and Witherspoon then tipped others, totaling 19 individuals and about $325,000 in profits, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Janaki Chopra. The three ball players each profited between roughly $56,000 and $64,000.
All three men pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud, according to court records. The three have been out of custody on pre-trial release for over two years.
Prosecutors recommended a sentence of time served and no supervised release for the trio, considering their behavior and the fact that there weren’t any identifiable victims.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw agreed to the recommendation, noting their transparency and efforts to become better people while they have remained out of custody.
“This incident arose out of friendship, not a scheme,” Sabraw said Friday. “The manner you chose to move forward is remarkable.”
Federal prosecutors revealed the insider trading indictment in March 2024, and the Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil insider trading lawsuit against the trio. Qsar and Witherspoon resolved the SEC lawsuit by paying the illegally obtained dollar amount plus interest, according to court records, but Bernard has not yet paid it back, due to financial struggles as he seeks employment, he told the judge Friday.
According to the SEC, before Jack in the Box bought Del Taco in December 2021 for $575 million, the four purchased stock in Del Taco, and when the acquisition was publicized, Del Taco’s stock increased by 66%.
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Qsar apologized in both a letter to the judge and during the sentencing hearing Friday. He said he has a full-time job in technology sales and coaches youth baseball, trying to instill good character in young athletes.
“There is no version of this where I was not wrong, and I have stopped looking for one. I think about it constantly, and I am ashamed of it,” Qsar wrote in a letter, which he read aloud in court. “My wife and my family have had to carry the embarrassment and pain of my decision, and watching them do that has been the hardest part of all of this.”
Qsar profited about $56,000 from the crime and paid about $120,000.
Witherspoon works for a small start-up company in sales and went back to college for his chemical engineering degree. He said in his letter to Sabraw that he’s faced hurdles in landing a job in that field.
“Since this became public, I have told every potential employer about my involvement up front, and I have been turned down because of it,” Witherspoon wrote. “I put myself in this position, and I am the one who has to work my way out of it. I am doing that the only way I know how, which is by outworking it and taking accountability every single day.”
Witherspoon profited about $42,000 and paid about $94,000.
Chopra, the prosecutor, said in the sentencing memorandum that the three likely committed the offense “out of greed and recklessness.” However, defense attorney Marc Levinson said “this really wasn’t the case” for Bernard, a Valley Center native.
In a sentencing memorandum, Levinson said Bernard, who played minors for the Colorado Rockies, faced financial struggles during his baseball career. He received a $72,000 signing bonus, then made about $600 to $700 biweekly. Like most minor league players, he was responsible for his temporary housing in whatever city he was assigned. He also had a wrist injury at the time of his crime, which led him to uncertainty about the future of his career.
“The image of a ‘professional baseball player’ can be misleading,” Levinson wrote. “This offense occurred when Mr. Bernard was especially vulnerable to the lure of easier money. … Mr. Bernard was a professional baseball player making poverty-level wages.”
“I took an unfair advantage that I wasn’t entitled to, and I regret that,” Bernard told Sabraw Friday. “I will do everything I can to be someone my family can be proud of again.”
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Sabraw said this was a “victimless crime,” but a serious matter.
