Suspicious Equifax stock sales earn Justice Department probe


The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether or not three Equifax executives who sold $1.8 million in stock just days after a massive cybersecurity breach broke insider-trading laws, Bloomberg reports. "The three executives who sold a small percentage of their Equifax shares on Tuesday, August 1, and Wednesday, August 2, had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares," an Equifax spokesperson previously said.
"To run afoul of laws that prohibit insider trading, a seller has to be aware of nonpublic information," Bloomberg writes.
Equifax said it discovered the breach July 29, and that hackers may have gained access to company databases in mid-May.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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