As I've observed before, the SEC loves to craft press release headlines that feature defendants' interesting or high-profile jobs. For example, past SEC headline highlights include:

"Commission Settles with Motivational Speaker"

"SEC Charges Nationally Known Psychic in Multi-Million Dollar Securities Fraud"

"SEC Charges Former Professional Baseball Player Doug DeCinces and Three Others with Insider Trading"

"SEC Charges College Football Hall of Fame Coach in $80 Million Ponzi Scheme"

All of this makes it quite mystifying to me how the SEC's case filed last week against Richard G. Condon generated only the following, snooze-worthy headline: "SEC Charges Consultant and Friend With Insider Trading in Advance of P.F. Chang’s Merger."

"Consultant"? "Consultant?!!?" That's the best we can do here, SEC? According to the SEC's complaint, Condon is no typical consultant sitting in a cubicle somewhere writing COBOL programs, nor is he one of the "Bobs" telling Initech which employees it should fire in the movie Office Space. Au contraire! In fact, the SEC states in its Complaint that Condon

is a “life coach” who worked as an executive coaching consultant for Panda Restaurant Group (“Panda”). While consulting for Panda between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012, Condon learned that Panda was working to acquire PF Chang’s, an effort Panda internally referred to as “Project Potsticker.”

I feel like the "Life Coach" angle to this case, which instantly makes me think of Matt Foley ("I live in a van down by the river!"), clearly deserved to be in that headline. I mean, can't we all relate to the desire to get back on the right track with our life coach?

In fact, I would have doubled-down on this headline and gone with "SEC Charges Life Coach and Friend With Insider Trading in Advance of Project Potsticker." I defy any of you to say you wouldn't have read that press release!

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