Goldman Sachs Exec Accused of Insider Trading

MANHATTAN (CN) – Arrested in California before being charged in New York, a Goldman Sachs vice president faces civil and criminal accusations that he had a dirty dozen of companies whose nonpublic information he traded.

Federal prosecutors charged 37-year-old Woojae Jung, also known as Steve, with six counts of securities fraud and one conspiracy count.

“As alleged, Woojae Jung violated his duty to his company and traded on stolen insider information, over and over again,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.

The criminal complaint withholds many of the details of these trades, but the Securities and Exchange Commission lays them out in more specificity in its civil filing listing three claims of fraud and unjust enrichment.

“During the course of his employment, Jung obtained access to sensitive information about impending transactions in which the investment bank was advising one of the parties,” the commission wrote in a 26-page complaint.

“Between at least February 2015 and July 2017, Jung misappropriated that highly-confidential information to trade in the securities of 12 different companies prior to the public announcement of the transactions,” it continued. “Jung attempted to conceal his connection to the trading by purchasing the securities in a brokerage account held in the name of a friend living in South Korea, relief defendant Sungrok Hwang.”

The dozen companies that regulators identified as dirty trades include: WebMD; chemical company W.R. Grace; mining company Foresight Energy; software companies CA Inc. and Nimble Storage; semiconductor companies KLA-Tencor Corporation, Microsemi Corporation and Fairchild Semiconducter International; and tech companies SanDisk, Fei Company and Gigamon Inc.

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