On Monday, February 29, 2016, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York returned a verdict in favor of the SEC in the agency's third federal court trial of FY 2016 (which began on October 1, 2015).

 

In the case of SEC v. Payton, which the SEC filed in June 2014, the SEC alleged that two former brokers, Benjamin Durant III and Daryl M. Payton, traded on inside information ahead of IBM Corporation's $1.2 billion acquisition of SPSS Inc. in 2009. The SEC alleged that the brokers traded on a tip they received about the acquisition from a fellow broker, and made ill-gotten trading gains of approximately $300,000. After a two week trial, the jury found both Payton and Durant liable for insider trading.

 

Following the verdict in this trial, the SEC's scorecard in FY 2016 now includes three trials. In all three of these cases, the SEC has achieved outright victories (in which it won on all of its claims). Here is the list as it currently stands:

SEC v. National Note of Utah and Wayne L. Palmer:  VERDICT—FOR SEC (Dec. 2015)

SEC v. Bonan Huang, et al.: VERDICT—FOR SEC (Jan. 2016)

SEC v. Payton: VERDICT—FOR SEC (Feb. 2016)

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