WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2019) A Ukrainian hacker and six stock traders in the United States, Ukraine and Russia have been charged in a scheme to use non-public information obtained by the hacker to buy or sell stocks, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in a press release on Tuesday.
"The SEC's complaint alleges that after hacking the newswire services, Ukrainian hacker Oleksandr Ieremenko turned his attention to EDGAR and, using deceptive hacking techniques, gained access in 2016," the release said.
EDGAR is an SEC system used by publicly traded companies to report earnings and other developments that could affect stock values.
Ieremenko passed his stolen information to individuals who used it to trade in the narrow window between when the files were extracted from SEC systems and when the companies released the information to the public, the release said.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice unsealed a 16-count indictment against Ieremenko and Artem Radchenko, both of Kiev, that included charges of securities fraud conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and computer fraud.
The indictment alleges that Radchenko and Ieremenko hacked the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system, stole thousands of files, and passed confidential non-public information to several stock traders, the Justice Department said in a press release.
In total, the traders traded before at least 157 earnings releases from May to October 2016 and generated at least $4.1 million in illegal profits, according to the indictment.
