The SEC charged nine defendants for (i) hacking into
the SEC's online Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and
Retrieval ("EDGAR") system to acquire material nonpublic
documents and (ii) trading on that information. Those charged
included a Ukrainian hacker, six individual traders in California,
Ukraine and Russia, and two entities.
According to the SEC Complaint, the Ukrainian hacker and several
of the traders were previously involved in a similar scheme to hack
into newswire services and profit by illegally trading on material
nonpublic information contained in the pre-releases. The SEC
charged the hacker and other traders for that conduct in 2015.
The Complaint alleges that the Ukrainian hacker made false
statements and utilized multiple deceptive techniques to acquire
thousands of nonpublic "test filings" from the SEC's
EDGAR system's servers. Some of the test filings contained
material nonpublic information, which allegedly was then sent to
the traders, who
