The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Friday in a press release that it had filed a complaint against a former employee of pharmaceutical giant Mylan. According to the press release, the defendant traded on insider information and reaped net profits of over $4 million.
The employee, an IT manager, “received material nonpublic information about Mylan’s unannounced earnings, drug approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and impending merger with a division of Pfizer Inc.” from a colleague, the release says. He allegedly used this information to execute lucrative options trades. At the time, the defendant held the position of Vice President of Global Operations Information Technology.
Alongside the SEC action, the Department of Justice announced a parallel criminal charge against the same defendant. According to that release, the activity at issue occurred from 2017 to 2019. The Department of Justice alleged that a co-conspirator, another Mylan executive not named in the announcement, recieved cash payments in India.
Finally, the Department of Justice also alleged that the defendant caused his tax preparer to create a false earnings report for an LLC that he owned, telling the preparer that the company paid a contractor when instead the company had transferred funds to the defendant personal’s accounts.
The defendant is set to be scheduled early next year.