Fired Apple lawyer charged with insider trading

A former Apple lawyer has been charged by prosecutors in the US for allegedly using classified information to earn himself more than $600,000 (£467,000).

Gene Levoff has been accused of insider trading, the illegal practice of trading on the stock exchange using confidential information “not available to the market”, over a period of five years up until 2016, Sky News reports.

Levoff was Apple’s senior director of corporate law and had been overseeing the company’s insider trading safeguards, the broadcaster says.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

However, the tech giant launched an investigation into Levoff last summer, placing the lawyer on leave in July before firing him in September, notes US broadcaster CNBC.

“After being contacted by authorities last summer we conducted a thorough investigation with the help of outside legal experts, which resulted in termination,” an Apple spokesperson said.

According to Ars Technica, Levoff learned in July 2015 that Apple would “miss analyst estimates for iPhone unit sales”. Between 17 and 21 July, when the tech giant published its quarterly sales report, he sold nearly $10m (£7.8m) worth of shares in the company.

When the news became public, Apple shares fell by over 4%, but Levoff’s early sale ensured he dodged around $382,000 (£298,000) in losses, the tech site says.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US government body investigating the case, alleges that Levoff also made $245,000 (£191,000) in profit between 2011 and 2012, the BBC reports.

Antonia Chion, associate director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said in a statement: “Levoff’s alleged exploitation of his access to Apple’s financial information was particularly egregious given his responsibility for implementing the company’s insider trading compliance policy.”

The charges against Levoff carry a “potential” 20-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $5m (£3.9m), according to the Financial Times.