If You're Trying To Sell Insider Info, Perhaps Don't Randomly Email Dozens Of Investors

from the protip dept

Perhaps an idea for a future Disney movie could be what happens when a clueless Disney employee tries to sell insider secrets to investors for a cut of the profits. Apparently, a woman who was the assistant to Disney's head of corporate communications concocted a scheme whereby she would get early access to Disney's earnings report, tell her boyfriend about it, and he would sell that info to investors for trading purposes. Reading the details of what went down after that shows a couple of pretty clueless, bungling, would-be insider traders. The boyfriend emailed 33 separate investors with the offer, apparently not realizing that a bunch of them would pass the info on to the authorities. In the end, the only three "investors" who agreed to buy were all undercover FBI agents.

And, to make the situation worse, the woman wasn't even able to get the earnings report that was the key to the whole offer. It actually sounds like her boyfriend just guessed the earnings-per-share number, after she was unable to get the document and the clock was ticking down to the close of trading the day before the earnings announcement was to be made. As time was running out, there was this fun email exchange between the couple:
"Is it coming or what," Sebbag e-mailed Hoxie 51 minutes before the closing bell that day. "Patience my dear," she responded. "It is fully used," he wrote back.

Hoxie then wrote: "What would you suggest I do. If I could wave my magic wand and give you what you want -- I would. However, since that is not going to happen, I suggest you call on your inner Buddhist -- and CHILL the f' out."
In the end, not surprisingly, the couple were arrested for conspiracy and wire fraud. My guess is they got the idea for how insider trading scams work by watching a few too many Disney movies...
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: insider trading, investors
Companies: disney


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Quick Brown Fox, 28 May 2010 @ 3:35pm

    This story belongs in "News of the Weird" under the heading "Least Competent Criminals."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2010 @ 3:38pm

    But Disney can get away with this sort of thing because they're Disney. Now if a Google employee tried something like this they would be litigated out of business.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2010 @ 5:43pm

    I'll bet

    She's blonde, isn't she.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    Big_Mike (profile), 1 Jun 2010 @ 4:46am

    So did they actually do something wrong?

    Saying you have insider information isn't actually trading insider information. The couple could get out of it with a good lawyer but my guess is they won't have a good lawyer and will screw up their trial too.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    ethorad (profile), 1 Jun 2010 @ 5:29am

    Re: So did they actually do something wrong?

    I'm guessing that's why three FBI agents agreed to buy the information - so that they could be caught actually trading.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    sprearson81 (profile), 10 Jun 2012 @ 8:37am

    Dumb, dumb and more dumb.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.