Ex-McKinsey Partner Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading in Goldman Sachs Fintech Deal
A former McKinsey partner has pleaded guilty to securities fraud for bets he made ahead of Goldman Sachs’ $2.2 billion acquisition of Fintech lender GreenSky.
Puneet Dikshit, 40, was charged with insider trading last month. He was accused of using information gained in his role advising Goldman on the deal to place out-of-the money call option bets two days before the acquisition was announced, netting more than $450,000 in gains.
Former Defense Contractor Arrested for Attempted Espionage
According to court documents, John Murray Rowe Jr., 63, of Lead, attempted to provide classified national defense information to the Russian government. According to the complaint, Rowe, who is originally from Massachusetts, was employed for nearly 40 years as a test engineer for multiple cleared defense contractors. In connection with his employment, Rowe held various national security clearances from SECRET to TOP SECRET//SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) and worked on matters relating to the U.S. Air Force’s aerospace technology, among other things. After committing a number of security violations and revealing a fervent interest in Russian affairs, including whether he could obtain a security clearance from the Russian government, Rowe was identified as a potential insider threat and terminated from employment.
Drut Technologies Sues Microsoft Over Cloud-Based Server Trade Secret Misappropriation
A lawsuit filed in Seattle, Washington says that Microsoft Corporation misappropriated plaintiff Drut Technologies’ valuable and unique software and hardware after allegedly conning them into a partnership while ultimately seeking to obtain broad intellectual property rights for nominal fees.
Issues arose when Microsoft engaged Drut, purportedly after recognizing the value of its solution, in 2019. The parties signed two agreements, a Master Supplier Services Agreement (MSSA), which was subsequently informed by a Statement of Work (SOW). The goal of the parties’ project was to “provide for disaggregation of cloud-based resources by pooling them to be available as necessary, and to reduce waste and redundancy in existing architectures,” Drut explains.
Tesla, Rivian get deadlines from judge in stagnant trade secret lawsuit
Tesla has been given thirty days to produce documents relevant to a lawsuit it filed against Rivian Automotive in July 2020, as the nearly stagnated lawsuit has been given deadlines for new developments by Judge Peter Manoukian. Rivian will then have 30 days to respond to Tesla’s requests regarding pretrial information sharing.
In July 2020, Tesla sued Rivian, claiming that the automaker was poaching former Tesla employees, as well as stealing highly-sensitive information that employees may have taken with them to Rivian after leaving Tesla. Tesla filed the complaint in the San Jose, California State Court, stating that “Misappropriating Tesla’s competitively useful confidential information when leaving Tesla for a new employer is obviously wrong and risky.”
FBI Sting Exposes Defense Contractor’s Espionage After FSO and ISO Identified an Insider Threat
In mid-April 2017, the FSO at “Company-3” assessed Rowe to be an insider threat and reported him as such to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). The FSO made this determination based on a review of social media posts, specifically one in which he “had revealed information regarding U.S. military fighter jets … to a woman he thought might be a Russian spy. On August 15, 2017, Rowe’s contract with the company ended, as did the FSO’s ability to provide follow-up. A review of Rowe’s LinkedIn profile shows him to have been employed by BAE Systems as a software test engineer from December 2015 through August 2017, where he claimed to have developed test plans for the EPAWSS (Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System) upgrade on the F-15 avionics.
Former Analyst Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud for Committing Insider Trading by Front-Running Employer’s Pending Trades
From at least in or about 2014 through in or about October 2019, POLEVIKOV was employed as a quantitative analyst at an asset management firm with headquarters in New York, New York (the “Employer Firm”). In his role at the Employer Firm, POLEVIKOV had regular access to information regarding contemplated securities trades on behalf of the Employer Firm’s clients, which included investment companies. During the period charged in the Complaint, POLEVIKOV engaged in a front-running scheme to misappropriate confidential, material, nonpublic information about the securities trade orders of the Employer Firm on behalf of its clients in order to engage in short-term personal securities trading in a brokerage account opened in his wife’s name. POLEVIKOV’s trading scheme was designed to take advantage of relatively small price movements in a company’s stock that followed from large securities orders executed by the Employer Firm on behalf of its clients. In total, POLEVIKOV’s scheme yielded more than $8.5 million in illicit profits.