3 Chinese citizens charged with hacking merger-lawyers for trading tips


Manhattan federal prosecutors have charged three Chinese citizens with trading on information they hacked from top merger-advising law firms in New York. The three men allegedly targeted at least seven firms, and made more than $4 million buying shares of companies in deals that were underway, then selling the stock after the mergers were announced and the stocks jumped, according to an indictment unsealed this week. The men managed to steal the emails of lawyers working on mergers from at least two of the targeted firms. You can read more about the alleged hacking at The New York Times.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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