Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities based on material,nonpublic information about the company. In various countries,some kinds of trading based on insider information are illegal. This is because it is seen as unfair to other investors who do not have access to the information,as the investor with insider information could potentially make larger profits than a typical investor could make. The rules governing insider trading are complex and vary significantly from country to country. The extent of enforcement also varies from one country to another. The definition of insider in one jurisdiction can be broad and may cover not only insiders themselves but also any persons related to them,such as brokers,associates,and even family members. A person who becomes aware of non-public information and trades on that basis may be guilty of a crime.
John Campbell McTiernan Jr. is an American retired filmmaker. He is best known for his action films,including Predator (1987),Die Hard (1988),and The Hunt for Red October (1990). His later well-known films include the action-comedy-fantasy film Last Action Hero (1993),the action film sequel Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995),the heist-film remake The Thomas Crown Affair (1999),and The 13th Warrior (1999). His last completed feature film was the mystery-thriller Basic,released in 2003.
Shira A. Scheindlin is an American attorney and jurist who served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She is currently of counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP.
SEC Rule 10b-5,codified at 17 CFR 240.10b-5,is one of the most important rules targeting securities fraud in the United States. It is promulgated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,pursuant to its authority granted under §10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The rule prohibits any act or omission resulting in fraud or deceit in connection with the purchase or sale of any security. The issue of insider trading is given further definition in SEC Rule 10b5-1.
Anthony J. Pellicano is a high-profile Los Angeles private investigator and convicted criminal known as a Hollywood fixer. He served a term of thirty months in a federal prison for illegal possession of explosives,firearms,and a grenade. In 2008,he began serving an additional sentence for subsequent convictions for other crimes,including racketeering and wiretapping. Several other people were also convicted of crimes associated with their involvement with his illegal activities,including his actress girlfriend Sandra Will Carradine,film director John McTiernan,Beverly Hills police officer Craig Stevens,Los Angeles police sergeant Mark Arneson,and attorney Terry Christensen.
Jed Saul Rakoff is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The trial of Kenneth Lay,former chairman and CEO of Enron,and Jeffrey Skilling,former CEO and COO,was presided over by federal district court Judge Sim Lake in 2006 in response to the Enron scandal.
SEC Rule 10b5-1,codified at 17 CFR 240.10b5-1,is a regulation enacted by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2000. The SEC states that Rule 10b5-1 was enacted in order to resolve an unsettled issue over the definition of insider trading,which is prohibited by SEC Rule 10b-5.
George Benjamin Daniels is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Sidney Allen Fitzwater is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas,Texas.
Emmet Gael Sullivan is an American attorney and jurist serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Rajakumaran Rajaratnam is a Sri Lankan-American former hedge fund manager and founder of the Galleon Group,a New York-based hedge fund management firm.
Preetinder Singh Bharara is an Indian-born American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is currently a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years prior to leading the Southern District of New York.
SEC v. Rajaratnam,622 F.3d 159,is a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit case in which defendants Raj Rajaratnam and Danielle Chiesi appealed a discovery order issued by a district court during a civil trial against them for insider trading filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The district court compelled the defendants to disclose to the SEC the contents of thousands of wiretapped conversations that were originally obtained by the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) and were turned over to the defendants during a separate criminal trial.
The Raj Rajaratnam/Galleon Group,Anil Kumar,and Rajat Gupta insider trading cases are parallel and related civil and criminal actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the United States Department of Justice against three friends and business partners:Galleon Group hedge fund founder-owner Raj Rajaratnam and former McKinsey &Company senior executives Anil Kumar and Rajat Gupta. In these proceedings,the men were confronted with insider trading charges:Rajaratnam was convicted,Kumar pleaded guilty and testified as key witness in the criminal trials of Rajaratnam and Gupta,and Gupta was convicted in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan in June 2012.
SAC Capital Advisors was a group of hedge funds founded by Steven A. Cohen in 1992. The firm employed approximately 800 people in 2010 across its offices located in Stamford,Connecticut and New York City,and various offices. It reportedly lost many of its traders in the wake of various investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2010,the SEC opened an insider trading investigation of SAC and in 2013 several former employees were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. In November 2013,the firm itself pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and paid $1.2 billion in penalties. The firm shrank after returning the vast majority of its outside investor capital. Point72 Asset Management was established as a separate family office in 2014. SAC ceased to exist as a separate entity in 2016.
Terren Scott Peizer is an American businessperson. He was the CEO and chairman of Ontrak Inc.,a publicly traded healthcare company,but resigned in March 2023 after US authorities charged him with insider trading and securities fraud. He formerly worked as a junk bond salesman at Drexel Burnham Lambert,and ultimately testified against his former boss Mike Milken in Milken's securities fraud prosecution,in exchange for immunity from both criminal prosecution and SEC sanctions. He also held executive positions in small-cap technology,debt collection,bicycle tire,shoe importing,and biotech companies.
Aileen Mercedes Cannon is a Colombian-born American lawyer who has served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida since 2020. Previously,Cannon worked for the corporate law firm Gibson Dunn from 2009 to 2012,and then as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida from 2013 to 2020. She was nominated by then President Donald Trump to become a district judge and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2020.
Corruptly obstructing,influencing,or impeding an official proceeding is a felony under U.S. federal law. It was enacted as part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 in reaction to the Enron scandal,and closed a legal loophole on who could be charged with evidence tampering by defining the new crime very broadly.
The United States Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election began in early 2021 with investigations and prosecutions of hundreds of individuals who participated in the January 6,2021 attack on the United States Capitol. By early 2022,the investigation had expanded to examine Donald Trump's inner circle,with the Justice Department impaneling several federal grand juries to investigate the attempts to overturn the election. Later in 2022,a special counsel was appointed. On August 1,2023,Trump was indicted. The indictment also describes six alleged co-conspirators.
