TheCorporateCounsel.net

You’ve got to hand it to college fraternities – their members have an uncanny knack for getting themselves into serious trouble.  Most fraternity misconduct is the predictable result of their often over-the-top drinking culture & reckless hazing practices. But while that kind of stuff has become a cliché, it doesn’t mean that frat boys are incapable of more innovative misconduct.

Here’s a case in point: according to this SEC press release, one enterprising young man has allegedly been running a Ponzi scheme out of a University of Georgia frat house!  This excerpt from the press release indicates that the Division of Enforcement decided that when it comes to dealing with this kind of alleged misconduct, Dean Wormer had it right – “the time has come for somebody to put his foot down, and that foot is me”:

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an emergency action charging a recent college graduate with orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that targeted college students and young investors. The SEC is seeking an asset freeze and other emergency relief.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that Syed Arham Arbab, 22, conducted the fraud from a fraternity house near the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia. Arbab allegedly offered investments in a purported hedge fund called “Artis Proficio Capital,” which he claimed had generated returns of as much as 56% in the prior year and for which investor funds were guaranteed up to $15,000.

Arbab also allegedly sold “bond agreements” which promised investors the return of their money along with a fixed rate of return. The SEC’s complaint alleges that at least eight college students, recent graduates, or their family members invested more than $269,000 in these investments.

According to the SEC’s complaint, no hedge fund existed, Arbab’s claimed performance returns were fictitious, and he never invested the funds as represented. Instead, as money was raised, Arbab allegedly placed substantial portions of investor funds in his personal bank and brokerage accounts, which he used for his own benefit, including trips to Las Vegas, shopping, travel, and entertainment.

As noted in the press release, the SEC is seeking an asset freeze & a whole bunch of other emergency relief. Still, I was a little disappointed to find no reference to “double secret probation” in the SEC’s complaint.

SCOTUS Punts on “Duty to Update”

The SCOTUS has managed to dodge some pretty controversial issues in recent weeks, and according to this D&O Diary blog, the question of whether the securities laws impose a “duty to update” is another controversy that you can add to the list.  Here’s an excerpt:

In a little noticed-development last week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari in Hagan v. Khoja, in which former officials of a bankrupt pharmaceutical company sought to have the Court review a decision by the Ninth Circuit to revive a securities class action lawsuit against them.

Had the petition been granted, the Court would have been called upon to consider the controversial question of whether public companies have a duty to update prior disclosures that were accurate when made. The Court’s cert denial leaves the Ninth Circuit’s ruling standing and the questions surrounding the existence and requirements of a duty to update remain unsettled.

Insider Trading:  Don’t Look Now, But Here Comes Congress. . . 

This NYT DealBook article reports on “The Insider Trading Prohibition Act,” which recently cleared the House Financial Services Committee.  The proposed legislation is intended to eliminate some of the uncertainty surrounding insider trading law – and expand the government’s ability to bring insider trading cases. This excerpt provides an example of the greater flexibility the legislation would provide to prosecutors:

The legislation also would move insider trading law away from its focus on a duty to keep information confidential by more broadly describing what constituted “wrongful” trading or transmission of confidential information. There would be four ways to show that the information had been obtained wrongfully: by theft, bribery or espionage; by violation of any federal law protecting computer data; by conversion, misappropriation or unauthorized and deceptive taking of information; and by breach of a fiduciary duty or breach of “any other personal or other relationship of trust and confidence.”

By expressly including a breach of a federal data privacy law or theft of information, the legislation would eliminate some of the uncertainties surrounding the application of insider trading law to the kind of “outsider trading” schemes exemplified by the 2016 hack on the SEC’s Edgar database.

This WilmerHale memo suggests that prosecutors have already found a work-around for some of the issues that Congress is trying to address with this legislation – a federal statute that was added to their arsenal as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

– John Jenkins