SEC Charges U.K. Citizen in Hacking and Trading Scheme Involving Five U.S. Public Companies

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against U.K. citizen Robert B. Westbrook for hacking into the computer systems of five U.S. public companies to obtain material nonpublic information about their corporate earnings and using that information to make approximately $3.75 million in illicit profits by trading in advance of the companies’ public earnings announcements. The SEC’s complaint, filed on September 27, 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleges that, between approximately January 2019 and August 2020, Westbrook gained unauthorized access into the public companies’ computer systems—prior to the companies’ earnings announcements—by resetting passwords of senior level executives’ accounts.