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Equifax Web Site Designer Fined $50,000 And Confined To Home Over Insider Trading (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
A 44-year-old, Georgia-based programmer -- who'd been working at Equifax since 2003 -- has been sentenced to eight months of home confinement and a $50,000 fine for insider trading. Working as Equifax's Production Development Manager of Software Engineering in August of 2017, he'd been asked to create a web site where customers could query a database to see if they were affected by a yet-to-be-announced security breach for a high-profile client. Guessing correctly that it was his own employer's breach, he'd used his wife's brokerage account to purchase $2,166.11 in "put" options betting that Equifax's stock price would tumble -- and when it did, he'd scored a hefty profit of $75,167.68.
"As part of his SEC settlement, he must also forfeit $75,979, the ill-gotten funds, plus interest," ZDNet reports, noting that the transactions "came to light after Equifax started internal investigations into several reported cases of employee insider trading." Another federal complaint also alleges that another Equifax executive avoided $117,000 in losses by selling all $1 million of his stock options -- the same day he'd performed a web search about how Experian's stock was affected by a 2015 security breach, but two weeks before Equifax's breach was announced. That case is still ongoing.
"As part of his SEC settlement, he must also forfeit $75,979, the ill-gotten funds, plus interest," ZDNet reports, noting that the transactions "came to light after Equifax started internal investigations into several reported cases of employee insider trading." Another federal complaint also alleges that another Equifax executive avoided $117,000 in losses by selling all $1 million of his stock options -- the same day he'd performed a web search about how Experian's stock was affected by a 2015 security breach, but two weeks before Equifax's breach was announced. That case is still ongoing.
He gets a 50k fine, forfeits all 75k in profits and his boss still hasn't gotten punished.
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He forfeits $50,000 and six months on home arrest.
I'm sure a lot of innocent people lost money from this hack. Not all, but some..add this guy to the list.
The government is enforcing a rule meant to keep executives from 'throwing the game'.
In this case, the $75,000 he 'stole' is from an investment firm that steals this much every minute in microsecond transactions! Come on! This is a fucking *harsh* punishment for an average joe sort, which this guy seems to be. $2,000 is a very small amount to gamble.....
Its not like he hacked some executives email and then got his brothers best friend to do the transaction for him with €2million he got from that shady work he did for the politicians in Bulgaria last year..and, like a good senior financial executive would have, didn't cover it with other illegal debts...
sucks for him, but not sure I wouldn't have done the same except I'd never work for such a shitty company to begin with.....
This country is all about Rich CEOs getting away with murder and turning the other way to catch the li'l guys to satisfy the public as it will be splattered all over news sites. Fucking corrupt bastards in the top cop world who control who is culpable. But the idiot reporters will still be after Trump's blood in the news instead of this. Dont expect anything better from this.
Unless they told him formally or at the water cooler it was his own employer, it is absolute bullshit to charge him with insider trading. What's next? Going to charge government contractors for doing option trading if they hear a government manager say a huge contract is about to be pulled? This is not what insider trading is supposed to be about, but that doesn't really matter because laws are only for the little guy.
Wait a fricking' minute -- the article says he guessed. No crime took place.
He was smart, but he did nothing wrong but profit off of someone's deserved embarrassment.
The banks (some time ago) knew of their wrong-doing before the financial crisis, and no one
was punished. If I were writing software for a company and I guessed that the company would
do very well because of it, damn sure I'd do the same thing (there are contracts which prohibit
the buying of securities, but unless his contract / agreement had that clause, he (should be)
in the clear. It's not insider trading. WTF!!!!
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"Government cant do anything right, put us in charge of it & we'll show you what we mean." -GOP
I think youre mistaking conservative inability to do anything right with an overall governmental inability. If you'd try electing responsible literate people from time to time, maybe you'd see better results.
We all complain about this crap, but we also elect the same sorts of folks who allow it. Over and over again. There were plenty of viable primary challengers this time around who refuse corporate PAC money. Most lost. For all the talk nobody shows up to vote, or if they do they vote the incumbent because they want to be safe, stay the course.
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Wait a fricking' minute -- the article says he guessed. No crime took place.
He guessed based on insider information. That is illegal.
He was smart
No he wasn't. If he was smart, he would have covered his tracks. Instead of investing under his own name, or his wife's name, he should have used a more distant relative or a friend that he trusted.
The banks (some time ago) knew of their wrong-doing before the financial crisis
No they didn't. They were astoundingly oblivious to the problems with mortgage based securities right up to the collapse.
Some people saw it coming, and made billions shorting MBSes, but they were not "the banks" (other than Goldman).