SEC Charges 9 More Defendants in Hacked News Release Scheme with Fraud
On February 18, 2016 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed fraud charges against nine defendants for taking part in an international scheme to execute profitable securities trades based on nonpublic information that computer hackers stole from at least two newswire services. In August 2015, the SEC charged 34 defendants in connection with this same scheme. The SEC alleges that hackers hacked into newswire services to obtain the highly-valuable corporate information and then passed it to others who used the information to execute trades and generated more than $100 million in illegal profits. The nine defendants charged include five Russian nationals and four entities they controlled that engaged in the illegal trading.
The SEC’s fraud complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, and the court entered an asset freeze and other preliminary relief against the nine new defendants.
As outlined in the SEC’s initial fraud complaint filed in August 2015 and in yesterday’s complaint, the SEC alleges that, over a five-year period, Ivan Turchynov and Oleksandr Ieremenko hacked into multiple newswire services and stole hundreds of corporate earnings announcements before the newswires released them to the public. The SEC alleges that the hackers transmitted the stolen data to multiple groups of traders in Russia, Ukraine, Malta, Cyprus, France, and three U.S. states, Georgia, New York, and Pennsylvania. In the SEC’s action filed yesterday, the SEC alleges that Evgenii Zavodchiko, Extra Trading Company, Andrey Bokarev, Radion Panko, Green Road Corp., Natalia Andreevna Alepko, Solar Line Inc., Anton Maslov, and Tarek Investors Inc. used this same nonpublic information to place illicit trades in stocks and options, reaping over $19.5 million in illicit profits.
The nine defendants charged were brokerage customers of Malta-based Exante Ltd., and engaged in their allegedly illegal trading through a brokerage account held in Exante’s name. At the same time that it filed these new charges, the SEC dismissed claims previously filed against Exante based on the same trades.
The SEC has entered into settlements with three defendants charged in the August 2015 action, and two defendants, Igor Dubovoy and Aleksandr Garkusha, have pled guilty in parallel criminal actions filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the District of New Jersey and the Eastern District of New York.
The SEC’s new complaint charges each of the nine defendants with violating Sections 10(b) and 20(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 as well as Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933. The complaint seeks a final judgment ordering the defendants to pay penalties, return their allegedly illicit earnings with prejudgment interest, and be subject to permanent injunctions from future violations of the antifraud laws.
For further information about this securities law blog post, please contact Brenda Hamilton, Securities Attorney at 101 Plaza Real S, Suite 202 N, Boca Raton, Florida, (561) 416-8956, by email at [email protected] or visit www.securitieslawyer101.com. This securities law blog post is provided as a general informational service to clients and friends of Hamilton & Associates Law Group and should not be construed as, and does not constitute legal advice on any specific matter, nor does this message create an attorney-client relationship. Please note that the prior results discussed herein do not guarantee similar outcomes.
Hamilton & Associates | Securities Lawyers
Brenda Hamilton, Securities Attorney
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Boca Raton, Florida 33432
Telephone: (561) 416-8956
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