NEW YORK - A prosecutor called it a classic insider trading scheme. The sprawling plot involved leaked copies of a market-moving magazine, a corrupt grand juror and a plan for strippers to coax secrets from investment bankers.

A young former Merrill Lynch analyst must serve more than three years in prison for his role in the $7 million scheme - enough time to show Wall Street that sharing valuable secrets will not be met with leniency, a judge said Friday.

“This is the kind of case that comes along that people talk about,” U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Karas said as he sentenced Stanislav Shpigelman, 24, of Brooklyn. Shpigelman had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit insider trading.

Karas said he did not want people entrusted to protect stock secrets to think that stellar academic backgrounds and great families would protect them from prison for financial crimes.

Shpigelman was the “brightest of the bright,” one of a class of young, hardworking analysts chosen by investment firms to protect the secrets of pending acquisitions and mergers from those who might try to make millions of dollars off the inside tips, Karas said.

He said it did not matter that Shpigelman made only $10,000 and did not know that his tips were part of a large inside trading plot. Others made more than $6.7 million from October 2004 to August 2005 from various schemes, some using tips Shpigelman provided while he worked in Merrill Lynch's mergers and acquisitions division.

Karas called Shpigelman the “essential component in the scheme.” The judge noted that Shpigelman repeatedly sought out secret information about deals from others at his company.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Lawsky said Shpigelman provided others in the scheme “the most valuable inside information there is on Wall Street” - exact information about when deals would occur.

“Shpigelman did this for the oldest reason in the book - greed and the desire to make bundles and bundles of money,” he said.