Husband busted for $1.7M insider trading after eavesdropping on wife's business calls

[frauenfelder]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/23/husband-busted-for-1-7m-insider-trading-after-eavesdropping-on-wifes-business-calls.html

…

[LordInsidious]

Shouldn’t the penalty include all the profit from the trading, a fine and jail time? Did I miss that?

[snigs]

Hope his wife sues him for loss of wages and damage to her career, as well.

[danimagoo]

I don’t know if the Wall Street Journal piece mentioned it, but according to the Guardian, he took a deal with the SEC, agreeing to pay back the profit he earned, and to pay a fine on top of that which has yet to be determined. I’m not sure where the $250,000 mentioned by Mark came from. Maybe that’s the max? I’m not sure.

Loudon did not deny the allegations outlined in the SEC complaint, which was filed at the US district court for southern Texas, and instead agreed to a partial judgment, subject to court approval. That partial judgment will ban him from taking company leadership roles, force him to repay the money he made from the trade – with interest – on top of an extra fine to be determined by the court.

US man accused of making $1.8m from listening in on wife’s remote work calls

[SenorSchaffer]

So “ear hustling” is defense? We’re to believe she didn’t just tell him these things?

[sqlrob]

@frauenfelder

She left her husband and filed for divorce

She’s walking the walk, so I say, yeah, no reason to not believe her absent other evidence.

[MagicFox]

@frauenfelder

eventually fired her despite finding no evidence she knowingly leaked the acquisition to her husband.

I wonder if an executive with one X and one Y chromosome would have faced a similar outcome…

[danimagoo]

Yeah, if the SEC thought for a second she had voluntarily given her husband the information, they would be going after her as well. No one, including her employer who eventually fired her over this, seems to doubt that she was telling the truth.

[LordInsidious]

Thanks for the info, I started to look but got overwhelmed fast.

[atl]

It’s paywalled for me – but since he seems to have pretty much confessed, he (and she) could have worked out a deal where the SEC agreed not to go after her at all. Probably could have mustered a good defense given she went straight to her boss. The SEC isn’t shy about going after marginal cases put a plea deal could agreed that they wouldn’t go after her at all.

[danimagoo]

She turned him in the second he told her about it, which was a month after he did it. The first thing she did was tell her boss, who then informed the SEC. Then she left her husband and filed for divorce. Those are not the actions of a complicit party. They’re the actions of a woman who was already having issues with her husband, and this was the last straw.

[GagHalfrunt]

Perhaps she believed that he had done it to get her sacked.

[Otherbrother]

@frauenfelder

After learning of BP’s $1.3 billion deal to buy hundreds of U.S. convenience store and restaurant properties from TravelCenters of America, which had yet to be publicly announced, Loudon purchased more than 46,000 shares of TravelCenters stock without his wife’s knowledge, the SEC alleges.

Shares in the roadside chain soared more than 70% after the agreement was announced.

Man, sounds like the guy didn’t even try to cover his tracks at all. He bought about $2M worth of shares of this random company shortly before the deal was announced? Doesn’t the SEC have some way to automatically flag trades that are that suspicious looking?

[Alan_Wendt]

Fox and Mulder went through the SEC offices once and everyone was asleep at their desks.