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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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
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.
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.
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.