Goldman V-P charged with insider trading

A vice-president at Goldman Sachs Group was charged with securities fraud for using inside information about a dozen of the investment bank’s clients to make more than $140,000 from illegal trades with a co-conspirator in South Korea.

Woojae “Steve” Jung, a Korean citizen working at Goldman Sachs’s San Francisco office, was charged with one count of conspiracy and six counts of securities fraud for running the scam from 2015 to 2017, according to records unsealed Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.

The bank didn’t immediately have a comment when reached by phone. Goldman Sachs isn’t identified in the complaint but Jung’s LinkedIn page says he’s worked at the bank since 2012 after graduating from Wharton Business School.

Jung, 37, tried to hide his connection to the trading by purchasing the securities in a brokerage account held in the name of a friend living in South Korea, according to a parallel suit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The trades allegedly involved New York-based software maker CA, the Dutch technology firm NXP Semiconductors NV and FEI, a supplier of scientific instruments for nanoscale applications based in Hillsboro, Oregon, according to the complaint.

Jung got non-public information about business transactions involving the companies through his regular work, as well as by accessing the bank’s files and communicating with colleagues working on deals, the US said.