Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of US Criminal Probe (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether top officials at Equifax Inc. violated insider trading laws when they sold stock before the company disclosed that it had been hacked, according to people familiar with the investigation. U.S. prosecutors in Atlanta, who the people said are looking into the share sales, said in a statement they are examining the breach and theft of people's personal information in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Securities and Exchange Commission is working with prosecutors on the investigation into stock sales, according to another person familiar with the matter. Investigators are looking at the stock sales by Equifax's chief financial officer, John Gamble; its president of U.S. information solutions, Joseph Loughran; and its president of workforce solutions, Rodolfo Ploder, said two of the people, who asked not to be named because the probe is confidential. Equifax disclosed earlier this month that it discovered a security breach on July 29. The three executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in early August. The company has said the managers didn't know of the breach at the time they sold the shares. Regulatory filings don't show that the transactions were part of pre-scheduled trading plans.

Comments

By all means do

[Ol Olsoc]

Then in perfected USA fashion, fire the Janitor, and give the guilty a big bonus.

Re:By all means do

[Seven Spirals]

Aww C'mon, they haven't replaced everyone with H1B's, pushed mandatory overtime on the survivors, thrown a million-dollar hookers & blow party, pumped and dumped the stock (much), bought a Ferrari with company funds, looted the 401k, laughed at hapless investors on "private" concalls, or properly sexually harassed all their admins.

So, they have lots of executive stunts left to pull.

Equifax --admitted discovery-- on July 29th

[turkeydance]

exactly when they knew is unknown

Negligence or malfeasance - you pick

[JoeyRox]

So either these top-level executives were negligent in not knowing of a major security breach that others in the company likely knew or they broke securities laws by selling shares with material insider information.

Re:Negligence or malfeasance - you pick

[AmiMoJo]

Shane it's this that will get them prosecuted, not the fact that their incompetence fucked over millions of people.

Corruption as Usual

[Required Snark]

Often executives with lots of stock equity want to cash some of it out. They then schedule a sale, so that if anything comes up that might make it look shady they can legitimately say that there was no insider information involved.

These asshats did not schedule the sales. If they did, they would have already made a public statement about their innocence. It's now obvious that the people under investigation are of the same caliber as the fools who just "retired". It's reasonable to assume that they found out what was going on and sold in a panic. Yes, they are that stupid and thought that somehow they would get away with it.

If you assume that any upper management at Equifax, or their competitors, are dumber then a box of rocks you will most likely be right. Credit reporting is under-regulated, monopolistic, and corrupt. Just like the rest of Wall Street. It's a system designed to make insiders rich and immune from all negative consequence. Stockholders, regular workers and clients are all expendable.

This environment always full of incompetent greedy psychopaths. If you doubt this, just look at the President.