On July 2, a trader for a large Canadian hedge fund manager was
arrested in Austin, Texas, on securities fraud and wire fraud
charges.
As detailed in a press release1 and a
complaint2 from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the
Southern District of New York, the trader, Sean Wygovsky, allegedly
perpetrated a scheme in which he used his access to information
about his employer's impending trades to make profitable trades
in the accounts of three close relatives by trading in advance of
these trades.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which also filed
charges, described it as a "lucrative and fraudulent
front-running scheme."3
In announcing the case, the SEC highlighted the use of data
analytics in bringing the case.
