When you get married, you know that you and your spouse will have to adjust to situations you were not expecting, but working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic threw everyone for a loop. It lowered some people's opinions of their spouses. Some of them thought, "How could I marry someone who treats her coworkers so badly?" Others thought, "Why is my spouse so much nicer to his coworkers than he is to our family?" Another group of working-from-home couples gained a newfound appreciation for what their spouses do at work; they understood the inner workings of their spouses' professions more than they ever had by conversing about it at the dinner table or attending each other's company Christmas parties.
Then, there was a guy in Texas who overheard his wife's phone calls as she discussed her employer's plans to acquire another company; she never discussed the information with her husband because it was confidential, and she did not know that he could hear her conversations. Based on what he overheard, the husband made some lucrative stock market investments, and as a result, he faced criminal charges for insider trading.
If you are under investigation because of your stock market investments, contact a Texas white-collar crime lawyer.
Sometimes Insider Trading Is Legal, but Only If You Are an Insider
The stock market operates on the assumption that all investors have the same information available to them; based on this information, you win by making the best predictions about the value of publicly traded companies. The crime of insider trading occurs when an investor uses non-public information about a company as a basis for buying or selling shares of stock in that company. In most cases, it was legal for the investor to find out the non-public information; most people charged with insider trading are employees of the companies involved, and in the course of their work, they find out pieces of information about their employers or other companies, and they make stock market investments based on this before the information becomes public, such as before the publicly traded company publicly reports its profits and losses for the quarter. In other cases, the defendants in insider trading cases found non-public information from relatives or friends who worked for the companies involved.
In some roles, it is inevitable that you will find out information about changes in your company's value before the public finds out; this means that you are an insider. An insider is someone who owns more than 10 percent of the company or holds a job where he or she is party to non-public information. The law does not prohibit investing in your own employer's company on the stock market; it only requires insiders to file certain forms disclosing their access to non-public information.
Contact the Law Office of Patrick J. McLain, PLLC About Criminal Defense Cases
A Dallas criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are being accused of insider trading. Contact the Law Office of Patrick J. McLain, PLLC in Dallas, Texas to discuss your case.