Securities & Exchange Commission Charges Former Equifax Executive With Insider Trading

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged a former Equifax executive with insider trading. While an employee, Jun Ying allegedly used confidential information to dump stock and avoid losses before Equifax announced its massive data breach in September, 2017.

The SEC announced on March 14th that it had:

"... charged a former chief information officer of a U.S. business unit of Equifax with insider trading in advance of the company’s September 2017 announcement about a massive data breach that exposed the social security numbers and other personal information of about 148 million U.S. customers... The SEC’s complaint charges Ying with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and seeks disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest, penalties, and injunctive relief... According to the SEC’s complaint, Jun Ying, who was next in line to be the company’s global CIO, allegedly used confidential information entrusted to him by the company to conclude that Equifax had suffered a serious breach. The SEC alleges that before Equifax’s public disclosure of the data breach, Ying exercised all of his vested Equifax stock options and then sold the shares, reaping proceeds of nearly $1 million. According to the complaint, by selling before public disclosure of the data breach, Ying avoided more than $117,000 in losses... The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia today announced parallel criminal charges against Ying."

The massive data breach affected about 143 million persons. Equifax announced in March, 2018 that even more people were affected, than originally estimated in its September, 2017 announcement.

MarketWatch reported that Ying:

"... found out about the breach on Friday afternoon, August 25, 2017... The SEC complaint says that Ying’s internet browsing history shows he learned that Experian’s stock price had dropped approximately 4% after the public announcement of [a prior 2015] Experian breach. Later Monday morning, Ying exercised all of his available stock options for 6,815 shares of Equifax stock that he immediately sold for over $950,000, and a gain of over $480,000... on Aug. 30, the global CIO for Equifax officially told Ying that it was Equifax that had been breached. One of the company’s attorneys, unaware that Ying had already traded on the information, told Ying that the news about the breach was confidential, should not be shared with anyone, and that Ying should not trade in Equifax securities. According the SEC complaint, Ying did not volunteer the fact that he had exercised and sold all of his vested Equifax options two days before. Equifax finally announced the breach on Sept. 7, and Equifax common stock closed at $123.23 the next day, a drop of $19.49 or nearly 14%..."