Washington D.C., Jan. 13, 2025 \u2014<\/p>\n
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Alfred V. Tobia, Jr., the former president and chief investment officer (CIO) of one public company and a member of the board of another, and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Lee, with insider trading that resulted in more than $428,000 in illegal profits. The defendants have agreed to pay more than $1.36 million to settle the charges.<\/p>\n
According to the SEC\u2019s complaint, Tobia allegedly breached his fiduciary duty as president and CIO of the public company by tipping Lee in the Summer of 2021 about his company\u2019s plan to make an offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Spok Holdings Inc., after which Lee promptly placed trades to purchase Spok stock. When Tobia\u2019s company later issued a press release announcing the offer, Spok\u2019s stock price increased by approximately 26 percent. Within two days, Lee allegedly sold all of the Spok shares she had purchased, generating illicit profits of more than $262,000. In addition, while serving as a member of the board of the other public company, Tobia allegedly learned material nonpublic information about PFSWeb, Inc.\u2019s sale of one of its business units known as LiveArea. Tobia allegedly tipped the information to Lee, who purchased 60,000 shares of PFSWeb and sold those shares once the LiveArea transaction was announced. As a result, Lee made more than $166,000 in profit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we allege, Tobia repeatedly abused his position as a corporate officer by sharing material nonpublic information with his sister-in-law to enable her to place profitable trades,\u201d said Tejal D. Shah, Associate Director of the SEC\u2019s New York Regional Office. \u201cThe SEC is committed to holding accountable corporate insiders who abuse material nonpublic information for private gain \u2013 whether by trading themselves or by tipping others.\u201d <\/p>\n
Without admitting or denying the allegations in the SEC\u2019s complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Tobia and Lee have both agreed to settle the SEC\u2019s charges. In addition to agreeing to permanent injunctive relief, Tobia has agreed to be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years and to pay a civil penalty of $785,020. In addition, Lee has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $576,955. The settlements are subject to court approval.<\/p>\n
The investigation of this matter was conducted by Mariel Bronen, Kiran Patel, Oren Gleich, Elizabeth Baier, George O\u2019Kane, and George N. Stepaniuk of the SEC\u2019s New York Regional Office and was supervised by Ms. Shah. The SEC wishes to thank the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for its assistance.<\/p>\n
MyPR International Press Releases<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington D.C., Jan. 13, 2025 \u2014 The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Alfred V. Tobia, Jr., the former president and chief investment officer (CIO) of one public company and a member of the board of another, and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Lee, with insider trading that resulted in more than $428,000 in illegal profits. The …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","autoblue_publish_document":false,"republication-tracker-tool-hide-widget":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["type-post","category-news","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/mail\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}