Former Apple Lawyer Who Was Supposed To Keep Employees From Insider Trading Has Been Charged With Insider Trading (cnbc.com)

The SEC Wednesday charged a former Apple executive with insider trading. From a report: Gene Levoff, senior director of corporate law and corporate secretary until September, "traded on material nonpublic information about Apple's earnings three times during 2015 and 2016," according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey. "Levoff also had a previous history of insider trading, having traded on Apple's material nonpublic information at least three additional times in 2011 and 2012. For the trading in 2015 and 2016, Levoff profited and avoided losses of approximately $382,000," the complaint says. Levoff's position at Apple granted him insider access to not-yet-public earnings results and briefings on iPhone sales, the complaint says. On more than one occasion, he disobeyed the company's "blackout" period for stock transactions, selling or buying stock worth tens of millions of dollars, according to the SEC.

Comments

I think Apple folows the simular logic.

[jellomizer]

Just as we tech people say. Lets hire a convinced black hat hacker, as your IT security expert, because they would know how it is done. Lets hire a lawyer convicted in insider trading to stop other employees from doing it, because he knows how it is done.

There are two problems witch such logic.
1. the Convicted part: They got caught... So how good can they be.
2. They have shown a history of poor ethical thinking skills. Such jobs with high level of responsibility and general access to information, a strong ethics background is needed.

Re:I think Apple folows the simular logic.

[jellomizer]

The problem is, even in my job, I need to be conscious of my personal ethics all the time. They are so many things that I could get away with, which I don't attempt due to my ethical standard. And usually a few times a week, I need to ask myself, what it the Right thing to do. Not the Best thing to do.
You need to be sure that you do do not cross the line, and the sliding scale is easy to tip. Small lapses makes it easier to do larger lapses, until you have crossed the line, or if your lucky got close enough to see the edge.

You could be honest and say I will never do that again... However over time if you have a poor ethical self perception, you will start sliding back into your activities.

Oddly enough White Collar crime is more prone to reoccurrence and harder to stop. Because for a lot of the blue collar crimes, if you take the person out of the environment they can get better.

Re:I think Apple folows the simular logic.

[Anubis IV]

Just as we tech people say. Lets hire a convinced black hat hacker, as your IT security expert, because they would know how it is done. Lets hire a lawyer convicted in insider trading

You've got your facts wrong; he's never been convicted. The CNBC article and Slashdot summary are rather ambiguous in their phrasing, hence your understandable confusion, but if you check other reporting on the story, you'll see that what's actually going on is that he's just now being accused of crimes committed in 2011 and 2012, as well as 2015 and 2016. Apple didn't hire a convicted inside trader and he's never been charged with insider trading prior to now.

In fact, so far as Apple's response to his activities go, they put him on a leave of absence last summer when they were first notified that he was being investigated, then fired him themselves a few weeks later when their internal investigation turned up evidence of wrongdoing. The SEC is now following up with formal charges of their own, again, for the first time.

Re:Imagine the temptation

[GameboyRMH]

It shouldn't be as tempting when you're a highly paid corporate lawyer, wealthy enough to play with 8 digits' worth of stocks...but that's the difference between regular greed and insane greed I guess.

Re:Imagine the temptation

[Anonymous Coward]

It shouldn't be as tempting when you're a highly paid corporate lawyer, wealthy enough to play with 8 digits' worth of stocks

Except that greed begets more greed, and anybody telling you how the "free market" solves these problems is lying to you. The more wealthy you are, the more you feel entitled to dip your beak, because you are special and privileged.

Human nature tells us that people are selfish assholes only out for their own interests. Any economic or social theory which says that doesn't happen is a complete fucking lie.

Which in my book is capitalism, communism, and most religions because they all seem to be predicated on deluding yourself into believing that people aren't intrinsically assholes by their very nature.

You can't go around claiming your -ism works when you have fundamental assumptions which defy logic and reality about what people really do.

I fail to see why a highly paid corporate lawyer would be any less tempted to be a lying selfish asshole. In fact, I consider it more likely.

Misuse

[PPH]

I worked for a seedy outfit that repeatedly manipulates it's share prices. One day, the boss called everyone into a mandatory, absolutely must attend staff meeting. So, we go in and listen to a bunch of the usual b.s. Then he plops a market share comparison of our outfit and our major competitor based in Toulouse. It looked pretty bad (for us). He then informed us that the chart he had shown us was considered 'material non-public information' and we were now prohibited from selling any of our company stock for a defined period. No surprise, our company stock tanked.

We didn't need to see this chart to do our daily jobs. It was just a maneuver to keep employees from heading to the exits with the rest of the market watching.

Re: Imagine the temptation

[GameboyRMH]

That would seriously leave few current CEOs in office. Think about how many are considered "eccentric," and that "eccentric" just means "crazy but wealthy." And then consider that most of the apparently level-headed ones are also psychopaths. If CEOs were hired on merit they would indeed be required to undergo mental health evaluations to get that position.