Fergie's Tech Blog

Ukrainian Hacker Liable in SEC Insider Trading Case

Dan Margolies writes for Reuters:

A Ukrainian national who traded on insider information he obtained by hacking into a secure computer network was ordered by a U.S. judge to forfeit $580,000 in profits, interest and civil penalties, U.S. securities regulators said on Monday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had accused Oleksandr Dorozhko of gaining access to material nonpublic information about IMS Health Inc's third-quarter 2007 earnings by infiltrating the computer network of Thomson Financial. IMS had planned to announce negative earnings after the market closed that day.

Minutes after the hack and just before IMS's earnings release, Dorozhko purchased 630 put options on IMS's common stock, the SEC said in a statement.

After IMS's stock dropped a record 28 percent the next day, Dorozhko sold the put options and pocketed $287,346, the SEC said.

posted by Fergie @ 3/29/2010 09:47:00 PM