Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On May 5, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment in favor of the SEC against three Chinese defendants accused of hacking into the nonpublic networks of two New York-headquartered law firms and stealing confidential information regarding several publicly traded companies engaged in mergers and acquisitions. The defendants allegedly profited illegally by trading the stolen nonpublic information. After the defendants failed to answer the SEC’s complaint, the court entered a default judgment against them, imposing a fine of approximately $8.9 million against the defendants (three times the profits they gained by the unlawful trading, the maximum penalty allowable under the relevant section of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934).