US busts hacking/insider trading ring

Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans

NEW YORK (AFP) – An international team of computer hackers and stock traders was charged with pocketing more than $100 million in illicit profits based on stolen market-moving financial information, US officials announced Tuesday. The Department of Justice charged nine people in a criminal conspiracy with pocketing more than $30 million in illegal trades on the pilfered information. A parallel civil case from the US Securities and Exchange Commission listing 32 defendants said the scheme yielded over $100 million in unlawful profits. “This international scheme is unprecedented in terms of the scope of the hacking, the number of traders, the number of securities traded and profits generated,” said SEC Chair Mary Jo White. The conspiracy was engineered by a pair of hackers in Ukraine who successfully penetrated the computer systems of Marketwired, PR Newswire and Business Wire, which distribute press releases for major publicly traded companies, the officials said. The Ukraine-based hackers stole some 150,000 press releases from February 2010 through this year that contained non-public information critical to stock valuation, the DOJ said. Other defendants then “executed profitable trades based on the material nonpublic information contained in the Stolen Releases,” the department said in announcing the criminal indictment. Besides […]

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