Mark Cuban Charged With Insider Trading 176
geekboy_x writes "The SEC today charged Mark Cuban with insider trading violations, alleging that he divested himself of stock in mamma.com before the stock was diluted via a public offering." Something tells me that the billionaire blogger won't be talking about this one publicly any time soon.
Retaliation for Cuban's Anti-Bailout Website? (Score:1, Interesting)
Interesting how Cuban suddenly gets prosecuted right after he launches a website [texasbudgetsource.com] organizing against the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout called BailoutSleuth [bailoutsleuth.com], in the final weeks of Bush's power to direct the SEC, even though Cuban's transactions happened in 2004.
And by "interesting", I mean "suspiciously consistent with Bush's treatment of the Justice Department as a political asset for selective prosecution".
Twice now (Score:5, Interesting)
Twice in my career I have had a good laugh at the expense of someone whose abuse I suffered.
The first was David Duncan. He was a senior finance/accounting manager when I was a peon at Mobil. I basically had to jump at his every request even though I never worked for him or his department. I left that job to start an internet business, but I really enjoyed the day that I saw David Duncan testifying before Congress, explaining Enron to them. Beautiful day.
The second is today. When my internet company was encoding and streaming his sports and talk radio broadcasts (innovative for 1994, mind you), Mark Cuban used to page me and call me at home at all hours with the most unreasonable demands and questions. Now I realize if I had been willing to kiss his ass the way he was accustomed to being kissed, I might be a billionaire today, but it would never have happened. Today I am all smiles.
Re:Wrong, He Has a Blog Post On It (Score:3, Interesting)
Now let's say you're knocking back a few beers with your Intel buddy, and he tells you the i7 CPUs are failing en masse, the management is crumbling and AMD is poised to deliver a fatal blow. So in short, you are now in possession of insider information. So the question is, would you sell your stock or wait till you lose it?
Secondly, there's no stealing. You agreed, I agreed. We might have different information, but that's hardly a secret. And the person who is "more correct" will drive the market to correct itself. (See prediction markets).
A technical trading is evil? rofl I'm not even going to bother..
Re:More information here (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are a stockholder in a company, can the SEC consider you an insider under the law if an insider calls you and asks you to keep a secret?
So don't take his call or simply say, "La, La, La...I'm not listening!" when he tries to give you insider information.
Re:Wrong, He Has a Blog Post On It (Score:1, Interesting)
Whats REALLY coincidental is that he allegedly committed this crime one month before Stewart was sentenced to go to jail for her insider trading charge.
Stewart did not go to jail for insider trading. There was zero evidence she engaged in insider trading. She went to jail for lying to investigators while being investigated for insider trading.
More importantly, don't SEC investigators have anything better to do? There was no evidence Martha engaged in insider trading at all. And the amount under investigation, $50,000 of stock, is pretty small.
HOW MANY ENRON PEOPLE WENT TO JAIL? Why was so little effort spent trying to convict them? Enron had over $100 billion in (alleged) sales.
Personally, I think a bored prosecutor's spouse was a huge Martha fan and the prosecutor wanted to stop them from redecorating all the time.
Re:Wrong, He Has a Blog Post On It (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a lawyer [google.com]