New guilty plea, charges in global press release hacking scheme
LONDON, Feb 21, (RTRS): A third trader has entered a guilty plea over what US authorities have called a more than $100 million international scheme to hack into newswires that distribute corporate press releases, and use stolen information to conduct insider trading.
Arkadiy Dubovoy, 51, pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to US Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey. Dubovoy, of Alpharetta, Georgia, entered his plea before US District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo in Newark, New Jersey. He faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely get much less under recommended federal sentencing guidelines.
The defendant pleaded guilty a day after the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced civil charges against nine new defendants, in addition to at least 33 it previously charged.
Nine defendants have been criminally charged in Newark or in Brooklyn, New York by the US Department of Justice.
A lawyer for Dubovoy was not immediately available for comment.
Authorities have said the scheme centered on the theft by Ukraine hackers Oleksandr Ieremenko and Ivan Turchynov of more than 150,000 press releases from Business Wire, Marketwired and PR Newswire from February 2010 to August 2015.
Traders, including many with ties to Russia, allegedly gave the hackers “shopping lists” of releases they wanted to see in advance, including quarterly results of public companies.
The traders then made trades based on the press releases’ contents in such companies as Caterpillar Inc, Home Depot Co, Las Vegas Sands Corp and Panera Bread Co, authorities have said.
Fishman said Dubovoy admitted in court to buying stolen releases from the hackers, asking two other criminal defendants to decide which trades would be profitable, and agreeing to kick back half of his trading profits to the hackers.
Other traders who have pleaded guilty include Igor Dubovoy, 28, and Alexander Garkusha, 47, both of Alpharetta, which is a suburb of Atlanta. The new individual defendants in the SEC litigation are Natalia Andreevna Alepko, Andrey Bokarev, Anton Maslov, Radion Panko and Evegenii Zavodchiko. Their companies are located in Belize, Dominica, Panama and the Seychelles, the SEC said.