true. Did u c this?
Mark Cuban Charged With Insider Trading
Monday November 17, 2008 12:05:00 EST
(RTTNews) - U.S. securities regulators said Monday that they have filed insider trading charges against Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. The charges stem from trades in shares of an Internet search engine company called Mamma.com that took place in 2004.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the billionaire entrepreneur with insider trading for selling 600,000 shares of the stock of Mamma.com on the basis of negative information that not had been made public about an impending stock offering.
The charges allege that in June 2004, Mamma.com Inc. invited Cuban to participate in a stock offering after he agreed to keep information about the offering confidential. This included information that the offering would be made at a price below the market levels at the time and that the offering would be dilutive to current shareholders.
Cuban then called his broker and told him to sell his entire position in the firm.
The sale of the stake is estimated to have saved Cuban losses of more than $750,000, the SEC said.
According to the SEC, Mamma.com's stock price opened at $11.89 after the 2004 offering was announced, down $1.215 or more than 9% from the prior day's closing price of $13.105.
The SEC filed the charges in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
"Insider trading cases are a high priority for the Commission. This case demonstrates yet again that the Commission will aggressively pursue illegal insider trading whenever it occurs," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.
Cuban, who is currently the chairman of high-definition television cable network HDNet, became famous in the late 1990's when he sold his Internet startup Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for $5.9 billion. In 2007, Cuban was listed as #133 on Forbes' list of the world's richest people, with an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion.
Cuban purchased the majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 from H. Ross Perot Jr. for $285 million. As an owner, he has been consistently at odds with league officials, making a reputation as one of the most outspoken and charismatic owners in sports.
Commenting on the insider trading charges, Scott W. Friestad, Deputy Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said, "It is fundamentally unfair for someone to use access to nonpublic information to improperly gain an edge on the market."
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