On Thursday, former Eagles and Browns LB Mychal Kendricks pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and now faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced in December.
“Because I know I was wrong,” Kendricks said when asked why he was pleading guilty, via Philly.com. “I know that I made the decision to accept information, secret information, and it wasn’t the right thing to do.”
The judge said she wanted to make sure he wasn’t being coerced into the guilty plea.
“I’m making the decision because it’s the right thing to do,” Kendricks said.
Kendricks and ‘Black-ish’ TV writer Damilare Sonoiki have been charged by way of a criminal information. Sonoiki was “brazenly” passing along insider information to Kendricks from 2013-2015.
For the information, Kendricks allegedly provided $10,000 in cash and Eagles tickets. The two men made nearly $1.2 million off of the insider trading scheme.
The SEC says they were able to link trades in Kendricks’ trading account to an IP address associated with Sonoiki.
Kendricks, 27, is a former second-round pick of the Eagles back in 2012. He was entering the fourth year of his five-year, $29.896 million contract that included $16.4 million guaranteed and set to make a base salary of $5.85 million for the 2018 season when the Eagles designated him as a post-June 1 release a few months ago.
The Browns later signed Kendricks to a one-year contract worth a maximum of $3.5 million only to cut him loose shortly after the news of the insider trading charges surfaced.
In 2017, Kendricks appeared in 15 games for the Eagles and recorded 77 tackles, two sacks and six pass defenses for the Eagles.
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