NEW YORK: On Tuesday, former U.S. Congressman Stephen Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison for trading on inside information.

He was found guilty on four counts of securities fraud at a trial in March related to T-Mobile's $23 billion merger with Sprint.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in New York sentenced Buyer, a Republican from Indiana, in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1993 and 2011.

After his political career, he worked as a corporate consultant for T-Mobile.

Buyer bought Sprint stock after a T-Mobile executive told him that the telecommunications companies were in merger talks in 2018, and he made illegal trades again the following year, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors added that he made more than $100,000 from the Sprint trades and more than $200,000 from buying stock in Navigant Consulting before it was acquired by Guidehouse in 2019.

Buyer said he plans to file an appeal and asked to be sentenced to home confinement due to his service in Congress and the U.S. military.