SEC Announces Major Hacking / Trading Scheme Bust

[InfoTech]

Now, if they were to systematically offer 10% to whistleblowers and full anonymity , I am sure they'd collect even more.

They have a pretty active whistleblower program. The largest award so far was $30 million, paid out in 2014.

http://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-150.html

"Whistleblowers who provide the SEC with unique and useful information that contributes to a successful enforcement action are eligible for awards that can range from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected when financial sanctions exceed $1 million. By law, the SEC protects the confidentiality of whistleblowers and does not disclose information that might directly or indirectly reveal a whistleblower’s identity.

Since its inception in 2011, the SEC’s whistleblower program has paid more than $50 million to 18 whistleblowers, including a more than $30 million award in 2014 and a more than $14 million award in 2013. All payments are made out of an investor protection fund established by Congress that is financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid to the SEC by securities law violators. No money is taken or withheld from harmed investors to pay whistleblower awards."

 

[Fractals 'R Us]

The guys only had to hack prnewswire and orgs like that.. I'm sure these ancient news orgs have security that is just so incredibly sophisticated... not!

This is from way back but I used to use a news aggregation service, this was in the '90's. I was surprised at how sophisticated it was. It was with a brokerage. The odd thing was I was noticing that my feeds would be delayed one day but not the next, and not all the feeds, random ones... I think they were front-running their customers. I talked to the woman in charge of the technology and she promised to "look into it" haha... When I first started with that service I wrote filters on keywords and got the hot sectors and good news items. It was a goldmine but then eventually it became obvious that people either knew the news before it was out and/or had automated the whole process because I had about a millisec to get an order in.

 

[Occam]

This is really ridiculous.

Corporate earnings announcements should be kept secret in the company, and should never be sent in advance to all kind of media. The company will make the announcement and risk for leaks are very limited. I never understood why this sensitive information should be spread, maybe to let others (Americans, not Ukrainians) take advantage of it.

Agreed. The current system of "news embargoes" etc. is antiquated. With modern (or even 1990's) technology, I can see no good reason for market-moving information to be released to any outside server before it's publicly released from some single point of dissemination.

And market-moving information should never be released during market hours; or, if in some rare circumstances that's absolutely necessary, then they should halt the stock. Halting and restarting a stock isn't really any big deal anymore. On the other hand, insider trading and market chaos due to badly managed information releases are a big deal and occur all too frequently.

 

[Mtrader]

And market-moving information should never be released during market hours

Where I live quotation of stocks is stopped before any important news release.

 

[InfoTech]

One of the hackers has been released on $3 million dollar bond:

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/...n-accused-of-insider-trades-using-stolen.html

"Dubovoy must wear an ankle bracelet, his lawyer told the WSJ.

Prosecutors fought to keep him in jail, saying he is a flight risk due to close ties to Ukraine."

 

[athlonmank8]

Hard work goes a long way. Best to stop a bit early though

 

[InfoTech]

Update on this case:

http://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-191.html

Washington D.C., Sept. 14, 2015 —

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Ukrainian-based Jaspen Capital Partners Limited and CEO Andriy Supranonok have agreed to pay $30 million to settle allegations they profited from trading on non-public corporate information hacked from newswire services.

 

[vicirek]

This is really ridiculous. An underdeveloped country like Ukraine is playing with the entire US computer science industry and makes the Americans look ridiculous.

Corporate earnings announcements should be kept secret in the company, and should never be sent in advance to all kind of media. The company will make the announcement and risk for leaks are very limited. I never understood why this sensitive information should be spread, maybe to let others (Americans, not Ukrainians) take advantage of it. Maybe a hidden agenda? I see no other credible explanation.

Wall Street hired lots of Russians to program their infrastructure and algos so what is the surprise here? (there is no difference between Russian and Ukrainian in many areas including background and education if you did not know)

 

[Mtrader]

Wall Street hired lots of Russians to program their infrastructure and algos so what is the surprise here? (there is no difference between Russian and Ukrainian in many areas including background and education if you did not know)

Well the surprise is that, except from programming, Ukraine is a third world country that is able to make the "worldpower" US look ridiculous. I never understood why in the area of programming the Russians and Ukranians are by the best of the world. Whatsapp was developped by a Ukrainian programmer. I know perfectly well the similarities and the differences between Russians and Ukrainians.
There are however differences between Russians and Ukrainians, sometimes even big differences, especially with Ukrainians from the west part (Lviv)

 

[vicirek]

Well the surprise is that, except from programming, Ukraine is a third world country that is able to make the "worldpower" US look ridiculous. I never understood why in the area of programming the Russians and Ukranians are by the best of the world. Whatsapp was developped by a Ukrainian programmer. I know perfectly well the similarities and the differences between Russians and Ukrainians.
There are however differences between Russians and Ukrainians, sometimes even big differences, especially with Ukrainians from the west part (Lviv)

Those countries mass produced theoretical physicists, mathematicians and engineers when education was for free. They were behind in applying science because there was no free economy there. Classic example is radar stealth technology where the solution to the problem american developers faced came from theoretical work published in russian by soviet scientist.

Western Ukraine had different history tied more to Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland than Russian Empire. In reality in the Ukraine if one is not Russian, Jewish, Polish, Romanian and so on then he is Ukrainian, whatever that means.