Billionaire Mark Cuban indicted on insider trading charges
 

Federal regulators on Monday charged Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with insider trading for allegedly using confidential information on a stock sale to avoid more than $750,000 in losses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Cuban in federal court in Dallas. The agency alleged that in June 2004, Cuban was invited to get in on the coming stock offering by Mamma.com Inc. after he agreed to keep the information private.

The SEC said Cuban knew the shares would be sold below the current market price, and a few hours after receiving the information, told his broker to sell his entire stake of 600,000 shares in the search engine company before the public announcement of the offering.

By selling when he did, Cuban avoided losses exceeding $750,000, according to the SEC. At the time of the offering, Cuban was the largest known shareholder in the Montreal-based company, which later changed its name to Copernic Inc.

http://www.katu.com/news/34588924.html

oops! busted!

Maybe Martha can provide him with tips.

moron.

He must do this quite a bit.... I mean, why would he risk jail time and a criminal record for only $750K?

I guess his chances of owning the Cubs are now completely deep sixed. Considering his vote re: the relocation of the OKC Thunder (NBA team), this couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

A couple of things on this (and, I'm not a lawyer yet or by any means an SEC expert, so bear with me...)

1) He's still in the civil phase, so there's no guarantee that there will be follow-up criminal charges. I'm not sure of the percentage of these cases that turn into some sort of criminal charges, or whether his notoriety will play a part in subsequent charges, but he's not going to jail (yet).

2) There is a difference in Martha's situation - if I remember correctly, she didn't go to prison for insider trading, but for lying to SEC officials and investigators. It was the lying that did her in, not the insider trading itself.

ETA: Kevin, did he make any offensive comments about OKC during the process? Or did he just vote against the relocation?

I thought she went for obstruction of justice? (Martha, I mean)

She did - but lying to investigators is, in effect, obstructing justice.

Yep.

He's a jackass.

. . . except there's a decent chance he's right, if you look at attendance (especially road attendance) figures; this is beside the fact that the owner who took the team from Seattle is a first-rate cockbag who lied about literally everything, including in his dep(s).

This seems like kind of a long shot for a criminal phase, at least from a purely outside point of view, although Kevin's exactly right - this amount of money is effectively trivial for the guy, so it may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Exactly - I mean, you may disagree with him, especially because you're from the area, but the statement wasn't that egregious, in my opinion.

I'll agree with the two of you, though, that this may be part of a pattern. The SEC may be doing this with more of a long view, or they may have more information about other transactions than they're releasing to the public.

From talking to professors and people who know the process, my understanding is that most of the people in Cuban's position work out a deal with the SEC, make some sort of apology, and that's it. I'm wondering if his public criticism of the investigators will come back to bite him.

Or, maybe he'll just lie about it like Martha...

ah, that makes sense

We'll see in a couple of years. Right now, there's a definite honeymoon. Our season tickets sold out in 5 days. The team is 1-8, but we're #12 in the league in attendance right now. The road attendance figures are easy -- no one cares when a 1-8 team comes to town for a beat down by the home team. All of the teams doing better than OKC in attendance are playoff contenders, fwiw.

Next year, we'll have another high draft pick and hopefully be rid of Carlesimo. With all that young talent, I think we have a decent team for next year.

/end hijack

Charges Dismissed Against Cuban
 

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4336200

It looks like the SEC has 30 days to file an amended complaint.