SecuritiesAndExchangeCommission
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SEC brings charges in connection with hack of its financial system
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it is bringing charges against a Ukranian hacker for breaking into the agency's corporate filing system to access nonpublic information. The SEC is also charging a number of individual traders and entities who used that information to generate more than $4.1 million on illegal trades. The Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey announced it will be bringing related criminal charges.
Elon Musk says the SEC can't stop him from tweeting what he wants
Elon Musk says nobody censors his Twitter in the wake of his settlement with the SEC. As part of that deal over the securities fraud charge for his tweets about taking Tesla private, the entrepreneur agreed to step down as chairman and establish "additional controls and procedures" for his communications. "The only tweets that would have to be say reviewed would be if a tweet had a probability of causing a movement in the stock," he clarified in a wide-ranging interview with 60 Minutes.
DOJ and SEC subpoena Snap over allegedly misleading investors
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have subpoenaed Snap Inc. requesting information about its March 2017 initial public offering. In a statement to Reuters, Snap said it has responded to a government subpoena and believes that the SEC is "investigating issues related to the previously disclosed allegations asserted in a class action about our IPO disclosures."
Tesla board forms independent group to explore going private
It's been an eventful seven days for Tesla. What started with CEO Elon Musk tweeting he'd like to take the automaker private last Tuesday has only gotten weirder since. In response, the board has formed a special committee to evaluate the business move, as spotted by CNBC.
SEC is reportedly investigating how Facebook disclosed data scandal
Earlier this month, news emerged that the Securities and Exchange Commission had started its own probe into Facebook. Today, Sources told The Wall Street Journal that the SEC is specifically looking into whether the social media giant should have informed shareholders when it learned back in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had improperly acquired data of 86 million users from researcher Aleksandr Kogan the year before.
FBI, SEC and FTC are also investigating Facebook's data leak
Facebook has to deal with multiple federal agencies simultaneously investigating its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. According to The Washington Post, the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have joined the DOJ's probe into the two companies. The New York Times reported back in May that the FBI and the DOJ are looking into the political consulting firm, but it sounds like the probe is much bigger than that.
The SEC made a fake cryptocurrency to show you how ICO scams work
HoweyCoin, a new digital currency, was launched today through a pre-initial coin offering and the team behind it said it would be "the cryptocurrency standard for the travel industry." The HoweyCoin website offers a number of investment levels as well as various discounts depending on when you invest. However, when you click the "Buy Coins Now!" button, it takes you to an SEC website warning you of the strategies used by ICO scammers.
Justice Dept and SEC are reportedly reviewing Apple’s iPhone slowdowns
In December, Apple admitted to slowing older models of iPhones, saying the practice kept older phones with aging batteries from suddenly rebooting. Apple is now facing multiple lawsuits in the US and abroad as well as an investigation in France. And now, Bloomberg reports, the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into whether the company's handling of the slowdowns violated any securities laws.
SEC is ‘looking closely’ at companies that dabble in blockchain
The Securities and Exchange Commission has had it with companies throwing around words like crypto and blockchain in order to bump up their stock prices. There have been quite a few instances of that lately and the SEC says it will be looking more closely at public companies that suddenly shift their interests to cryptocurrencies or blockchain technology.
Hackers are stealing millions in cryptocurrency during ICOs
A new report from Ernst & Young details just how big of a problem security is when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Researchers collected data on 372 initial coin offerings (ICOs) that took place between 2015 and 2017 and found that over 10 percent of ICO proceeds are stolen by hackers, a percentage that amounts to the theft of up to $1.5 million per month. And in addition to monetary theft, hackers are also gaining access to personal information like addresses, phone numbers, bank details and credit card numbers.
SEC Cyber Unit's first charges target cryptocurrency fraud
The Securities and Exchange Commission's new Cyber Unit has filed its first charges since being formed in September. The unit's case is being brought against a company called PlexCorps, its founder Dominic Lacroix and his partner Sabrina Paradis-Royer and the SEC claims that Lacroix and Paradis-Royer were actively defrauding investors. PlexCorps was engaged in an initial coin offering (ICO) -- which was selling securities called PlexCoin -- that had already raised around $15 million since August and it was fraudulently promising that investors would see a 13-fold profit in just under one month. The SEC obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt the ICO.
Federal employees stole data from Homeland Security
Three employees of the inspector general's office for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are accused of stealing a computer system that contained around 246,000 employees' personal data. That information included names, social security numbers and dates of birth, USA Today reports, and one of the suspects is also said to have had in their possession around 159,000 agency case files. The data breach was reported to DHS officials in May and acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke decided in August to notify the employees whose information was included in the stolen data.
Equifax committee says executive stock sales weren’t insider trading
The eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice have been focused on some questionable stock sales initiated by three Equifax executives a month before the data breach that exposed 143 million US consumers' personal information was revealed to the public. Those agencies have been investigating the sales, which amounted to nearly $1.8 million, and are working to determine whether they were the result of insider trading. However, CNBC reports today that an Equifax committee has reviewed the sales and found no signs of misconduct.
SEC is getting serious about bitcoin fraud and fake news
The US' Securities and Exchange Commission has to deal with a lot more than classic financial crimes these days: it has to worry about everything from insider trading hacks to the integrity of the latest digital currencies. To that end, it's creating a Cyber Unit that will focus its enforcement team on digital offenses. These include hacks, such as attempts to obtain insider info or to compromise trading platforms and accounts, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
SEC suspects hackers used stolen insider info for trading
US Securities and Exchange Commission chief Jay Clayton has made a couple of security-related revelations in his recently published "Statement on Cybersecurity." He admitted that an attacker infiltrated the agency's EDGAR database in 2016 by exploiting a software vulnerability to gain access to non-public info. SEC patched the flaw as soon as it was discovered, but it found out just last month that the attackers may have used the insider information they stole to profit from financial trades.
Twitter hides daily user numbers to avoid Facebook comparisons
While Facebook is happy to wax lyrical about its user metrics, Twitter is keeping schtum on the number of its daily visitors -- even after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) got involved. Instead, Twitter wants everyone to focus on monthly numbers and the percentage growth of people who use it daily. But they're vague about that, too. The company has only disclosed that the number of monthly active users has stood at 328 million for the last two quarters, and the percentage growth of daily active users (DAUs) has increased more than 10 percent in each of the last three quarters.
SEC rejects Winklevoss twins' plan to trade Bitcoin as stock
A plan from the Winklevoss twins that would have allowed stock traders to buy and sell Bitcoin without setting up a personal Bitcoin wallet has been denied by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In an order handed down on Friday, the commission declared that the unregulated nature of Bitcoin markets would have made the proposed fund too difficult to monitor, and therefore ripe for fraudulent activity.
Snapchat's cavalier attitude draws the eye of Wall Street watchdogs
Snapchat's parent company has finally filed for its IPO, and Wall Street has questions. Beyond what Reuters reports is the "richest" initial public offering since Facebook, is news that an investor committee advising the Securities and Exchange Commission will review some of Snap's more, ahem, peculiar moves. Like if denying shareholders voting rights will extend into hiding executive pay and "other governance matters."
Feds begin criminal investigation against Theranos
In a letter addressed to its partners, the once-promising blood test startup Theranos has admitted that it's under criminal investigation. According to multiple sources, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California have started looking into whether the firm misled its investors about the state of its technology. The prosecutors even subpoenaed Walgreens, which offers the company's blood tests, and the New York State Department of Health within these past weeks. They asked both organizations for testimony on how Theranos described its tech to them, as well as for any document the company submitted. The Wall Street Journal says the criminal investigation's still in its very early stages, and it doesn't automatically mean the company will be indicted.
Bitcoin tech approved as a way to issue shares
For the first time, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is allowing a company to issue public shares using the technology behind Bitcoin. The honor went to Overstock, which was also the first retailer to accept Bitcoins from the public for purchases. It built its own crypto-currency tech via a subsidiary called T0 (T-Zero), and uses open-source Colored Coins to issue stock in the form of "blockchains," a type of electronic ledger. Overstock plans to license the tech to other public companies, and company CEO Patrick Byrne told Wired that it "can do for the capital market what the internet has done for consumers."
