The former chief executive officer of cyber-fraud prevention company NS8 now faces charges of impeding and retaliating against a whistleblower following an amended complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Adam Rogas, a co-founder of NS8 who also served as the company’s former chief financial officer, was sentenced to five years in prison last month by a federal judge after pleading guilty to defrauding investors of more than $100 million. He was ordered to forfeit more than $17.5 million.
Despite the steep penalties, Rogas still faces potential discipline from the SEC, which also accused him of fraud in a complaint filed in September 2020.
That complaint was updated Thursday to include retaliation charges stemming from Rogas’s termination of a whistleblower that tipped off the SEC in July 2019. After reporting to the agency, the whistleblower informed NS8’s chief of staff of their concerns, prompting the chief of staff to work with Rogas to limit the whistleblower’s access, according to the SEC’s amended complaint.
Rogas fired the whistleblower in August 2019, the agency contended.
Also newly charged in the amended complaint is Paul Korol, an NS8 co-founder and former chief customer officer, who allegedly assisted in Rogas’s fraud scheme. Korol received at least $6.22 million in ill-gotten gains from his actions, according to the SEC.
David Hansen, another NS8 co-founder and the firm’s former chief information officer, agreed in April to pay $97,523 to settle SEC allegations he tried to stop the whistleblower from alerting the regulator to the fraud in 2018 and 2019.
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