A former Equifax chief information officer who sold his Equifax stock a week and a half before the company announced a massive data breach was sentenced to serve four months in federal prison for insider trading.
Jun Ying, of Equifax’s U.S. Information Solutions, pled guilty in March. He was ordered to also spend a year of supervised release, and pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000 fine, the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta said in a news release.
Prosecutors said the $117,000 was what he would have lost if he hadn’t sold his shares.
Equifax discovered suspicious activity on its network July 29, 2017.
On Aug. 25, Ying and several employees who reported to him, were asked to respond, according to a MarketWatch article. Three days later, when he realized Equifax had been breached, Ying searched on his computer on what happens to stock prices when breaches are reported.
He then exercised all his available stock options and sold shares for more than $950,000, avoiding a loss of $117,000, prosecutors said.
The breach exposed the credit information of more than 145 million people. Equifax fired Ying for the insider trading.