The Justice Department announced this week that former Equifax CIO Jun Ying was sentenced to four months in prison for insider trading. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to selling his shares in the company before the announcement that he had been hit with a massive data breach in 2017.
The Security and Trade Commission charged Ying with insider trading last year. The Justice Department says that in August 2017, after learning of the gap, it began investigating the impact that a similar gap had on the stock price of another company. Later that morning, he quickly exercised and sold all of his stock options, earning nearly a million dollars on the sale. By doing so, he avoided a loss of $ 117,000 that he would have otherwise incurred when the company’s stock price fell after the disclosure. More than 150 million people had their personal information leaked in the incident.
“Ying thought of his own financial gain before millions of people exposed in this data breach knew they were victims,” United States attorney Byung J. Pak said in the announcement. “He abused the trust placed in him and in his prime position to benefit from inside information.” The DOJ says Ying is the second person convicted of insider trading: Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, another employee, pleaded guilty last July.
