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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.
Finally, the guilty part was found and rightly punished. I think we call now sleep better at night.
He gets a 50k fine, forfeits all 75k in profits and his boss still hasn't gotten punished.
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What I'm most curious about in this story, is how did Equifax figure out that this guy bought these put options? What kind of access does Equifax have to his wife's brokerage accounts?
He forfeits 75K in profits AND has a 50K fine. That's not "25K profit", it's a loss of 50K. Also he's sentenced to 8 months home confinement, not a "6 month vacation". I don't know about you, but I generally consider vacations to involve getting outside of my own home.
His boss not being punished is something we can agree is bad, but did you actually read the article before typing your outrage title?
Guy got 75k out of it and gets arrested and fined 50 grand on top of having to forfeit everything he gotten that way. And confined to his home.
Say, how again were the C-Levels punished whose criminal negligence caused all this to happen in the first place? A couple millions probably. And confined to the home they built with those millions, I guess.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Thank you ... you are a fine example of right wing NPC.
Have gnu, will travel.
So if he guessed correctly, he was never told who the client was?
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.
The little guys cheat a bit and get stomped on immediately.
Whereas the big bankers and wall street folks steal billions from us and get away scot free every day.
Just shows you how things are stacked. We need change.
The acting CIO has multiple federal charges. He's already done some jail time, and he's going to prison.
The acting CIO, Jun Yung, actually has multiple federal charges. He's already done some jail time, and he's going to prison.
Funny how making shit up that is the opposite of the actual facts gets modded +4. People sure do enjoy being jealous of the boss.
No one has been held responsible for one of the largest data breaches in this country's history from this same company, nor has the company been fined in the U.S. for the data breach, whereas the fine in the UK was a piddling $500K.
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!!!!
CAP === 'ascetic'
"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).
because the Ds at least have a small wing of the party that refuses corporate PAC money. There's gonna be at least 30 of them in the House after the election, maybe 40. I know of no such wing in the GOP. Even Rand Paul seems to be bought and paid for lately, having fallen in line with Trump on the various wars we're fighting (none of which have proper authorization or are even against countries that attacked us).
The Dems also have some folks who support issues that matter. I want single payer healthcare because I've got friends and family that need medical care and who are in medicine. I want a $15 min wage because I want demand side economics instead of supply side. I want to end the wars and stop selling arms to the Saudis. There's a lot of Dems that won't do that (Pelosi, Schumer, etc) but there are some that will. Again, I don't know of any Republicans that support these policies.
What I do know is they all poll in the mid to high 70s. Given that you'd think both sides would support them, but, well, now we circle back to the real problem, corporate PAC money. You can't serve two masters.
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Ban data aggregation companies
Only small people get punished. If you are rich and powerful, you can nearly destroy the world and nothing is going to happen to you. Laws are just a means to control the masses, they are not for restricting anybody powerful.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Fancy using your own wife's account to short. Surely he must have known some other wives that he could have used? And only $2K with a hot tip like that?
I bet his much smarter managers made a hell of a lot more than that. With no record of whose wives they used.
His mistake, he should of put a put on all their stocks. ;-)
So the executive is being investigated but the peon is already penalized. If the executive is penalized, it is likely that they will be able to avoid at least some of the penalty and profit much more than the peon did.
Nice.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen