Category: Insider Trading

Ugh. Prosecutors filed charges against 30 people who allegedly participated in an insider trading scheme that involved several major corporate law firms. The defendants include corporate attorneys, who allegedly exploited confidential information from nearly 30 merger and acquisition deals. Charges were filed by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the…

Early this year when the US invaded Venezuela and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro there was a series of well timed trades on the Polymarket prediction market. “Predictios” purchases of $32,000 were placed from December 27 to January 2, just before the US military effort. Was it insider trading? No. Polymarket trades are not securities….

You’re senior management of a public company. You just made a million dollar bonus for performance. You get paid $735,000 if the company is sold. You’ve got 150,000 shares of company stock that’ll be worth over $4 million. You’re in the process of selling the company. Do you tell your wife and best friend about…

You are happily working at a public company with 100,000+ shares of stock. The stock price was in the dumps. It was close to $20 per share when you started and was now down to less than $0.50. Telehealth was having some rough patches. Selling teeth aligners, Smile Direct had served more than 2 million…

We have a few examples of eavesdropping as a source of information for fraudulent insider trading. This was a heightened problem during the work-at-home era and interacting with family members. The insider trading case against a translator was a new take. The translator in question has a family that is a high level executive of…

Al Tobia was an insider at two publicly traded companies, obtained material nonpublic information about potential corporate transactions involving three other publicly traded companies. With that information, Tobia tipped his sister-in-law who purchased shares of these three companies in her brokerage account and in an account held by her elderly parents. At least according to…

We’ve seen a few cases of trading on material, non-public information sprouting from spouses working at home. We just got another one, with a twist. Most recently, we had the case of a BP manager having her spouse spy on the merger activity she was working on for her company. That husband is tied up…

You’re sitting poolside sipping on margaritas with your buddy. You’ve always wanted to work together and your buddy says that now would be a good time to do so. You ask, what about your current position. Your buddy, with a few margaritas in his gut, tells you that his current position is uncertain because the…

Jordan Qsar, Austin Bernard, Chase Lambert and “Finance Person” all played baseball at Pepperdine University. After graduating, Finance Person ended up working at Jack in Box in the strategic finance group. Qsar went on to play for the minor league teams of the Tampa Bay Rays and other teams. Qsar played with Grant Witherspoon in the…