Originally posted by: senseamp
It's another Martha Stewart type prosecution to make it look like they are doing something while they ignore the much bigger abuses on Wall Street.
No it isnt.
I'm not a securities lawyer, but it is my concentration in law school. What he did was pretty boneheaded. Martha Stewart at least had a little bit of plausible deniability, but Cuban doesn't. He sold his shares because he was pissed that Copernic was going to dilute his value, and moreso because they'd be doing it at a discount to market.
This is almost a textbook 10b-5 violation. It's not in the complaint, so I'm going to guess his only potential defense is that he had no duty to disclose the information and therefore does not have tippee liability. He doesn't meet the 10% threshold of a statutory insider, but with over 5%, getting a personal call from the CEO, and agreeing that he would not disclose the information, it's a pretty blatant offense.
This is nothing. I'd bet that the DOJ is also investigating (SEC can't file criminal charges, only civil and administrative). They have some clever tactics in being privvy to the civil discovery process, sometimes even using the SEC to investigate by filing like this and then having the civil discovery documents passed through. Courts have frowned on this, but haven't completely slammed the door on it.
I'm not writing a treatise here, nor am I qualified to do that in the first place, and I know I'm leaving out some detail here. However, Cuban would be very wise to settle this if he can.