February 10, 2017

The SEC announced fraud charges against Shaohua (Michael) Yin for allegedly reaping more than $29 million in illegal profits based on insider trading in advance of the announcement of Comcast Corp.’s acquisition of DreamWorks Animation SKG in April 2016.  The SEC also obtained an emergency court order freezing brokerage accounts alleged to contain these profits.  The SEC alleges that in the weeks leading up to the announcement, Yin amassed more than $56 million of DreamWorks stock in the U.S. brokerage accounts of five Chinese nationals, including his elderly parents.  DreamWorks stock price rose 47.3% once the acquisition was announced.  Yin, a partner at Summitview Capital Management Ltd., a Hong Kong-based private equity firm, allegedly did not trade in DreamWorks stock through his own account but instead traded through five accounts from addresses in Beijing and Palo Alto and on a computer that was also used to access Yin’s email accounts.  SEC

Tagged in: Insider Trading,