SEC Busts Another Amateur Night Insider Trading Ring

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Maryland business consultant and his uncle with insider trading, saying they used codes from the 1987 movie Wall Street to try to hide their scheme.
Baltimore-based consultant Brett A. Cohen received coded e-mails from a fraternity brother about two biotechnology companies and passed the information to an uncle, David V. Myers, of Cleveland, Ohio who traded on the tip, the SEC said.

The fraternity brother, who was not named, received the information from his brother, a patent agent for San Diego-based Sequenom Inc, a maker of genetic analysis products, the SEC said.

In one of the e-mails sent to Cohen, the patent agent's brother asked if there was any word related to "Blu H@rsesh0e," the SEC said. In the movie Wall Street, "Blue Horseshoe loves Anacot Steel" was a code phrase used by actor Charlie Sheen to pass along an insider tip.


Puhleez. If you don't know what you are doing, don't trade on inside information. The pros trade on it day in and day out, but they know what they are doing (most of the time).

Even after the upcoming Big Bust, they won't catch most. But for amateurs, you are dead fish.

There's nothing wrong with insider trading, in most cases, but it does justify the SEC's absurd existence.