The U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) charged Robert B. Westbrook, a U.Okay. citizen, with hacking into the pc techniques of 5 U.S. public firms to entry confidential earnings info and conduct insider buying and selling.
Westbrook then used this nonpublic info 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 named “insider trading,” the place an unauthorized particular person makes investments based mostly on confidential info not accessible 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 studies.
Entry to e-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 e-mail accounts, VPN providers, and Bitcoin to carry out the unlawful investments whereas hiding his id. Nevertheless, the SEC says it was nonetheless in a position to monitor him down utilizing information analytics.
Westbrook now faces each civil expenses from the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) and prison expenses from the U.S. Legal professional’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 expenses will doubtless comprise wire fraud, securities fraud, and unauthorized entry to pc techniques (hacking).
The above might carry important 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.
