SEC Charges Ring of Buddies with Insider Trading

The SEC has charged three health care company employees and four others in a New Jersey-based insider trading ring of various high school friends who traded in advance of 11 public announcements involving mergers, a drug approval application, and quarterly earnings of pharmaceutical companies and medical technology firms. The group generated $1.7 million in illegal profits and kickbacks.

The SEC press release for the case is intended to send a message that the Commission has the ability to uncover conspiracies in which one person obtains the inside information and a seemingly unrelated person effects the illegal trading.

Click here to view press release in full (links externally to SEC website). See also: SEC Complaint.