The U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) charged Robert B. Westbrook, a U.Okay. citizen, with hacking into the pc programs of 5 U.S. public firms to entry confidential earnings data and conduct insider buying and selling.
Westbrook then used this nonpublic data to make trades forward of 14 earnings bulletins between January 2019 and August 2020, incomes roughly $3,750,000 in illicit earnings.
This exercise is called “insider buying and selling,” the place an unauthorized particular person makes investments based mostly on confidential data not obtainable to most of the people.
The British hacker allegedly breached the businesses by resetting the passwords of senior executives within the focused organizations after which hijacking them to entry paperwork or emails containing monetary and earnings reviews.
Entry to electronic mail accounts would enable the person to simply wipe traces of this exercise, together with deleting the password reset alerts or utilizing forwarding guidelines.
Moreover, Westbrook used nameless electronic mail accounts, VPN providers, and Bitcoin to carry out the unlawful investments whereas hiding his identification. Nonetheless, the SEC says it was nonetheless in a position to monitor him down utilizing knowledge analytics.
Westbrook now faces each civil prices from the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) and prison prices from the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the District of New Jersey.
The SEC charged Westbrook with violating the antifraud provisions of the Securities Alternate Act of 1934, whereas the prison prices will seemingly comprise wire fraud, securities fraud, and unauthorized entry to pc programs (hacking).
The above might carry vital jail sentences, hefty fines, usually greater than the revenue gained from illicit funding actions, and an order barring Westbrook from buying and selling in securities sooner or later.