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Bulletins

Ex-Apple lawyer hired to prevent insider trading charged with insider trading

Gene Levoff was in charge of reviewing earnings materials before they were made public.

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The lawyer in charge of preventing insider trading was just charged with insider trading.

Image: Apple

Gene Levoff, Apple's former director of Corporate Law, pleaded guilty to insider trading, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.

Levoff has been charged with six counts of securities fraud for executing trades of Apple stock based on nonpublic information about Apple's financial results, allowing him to make $227,000 on some trades and avoid losses of around $377,000 on others between February 2011 and April 2016. Each fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, along with a $5 million fine.

Levoff was co-chairman of Apple’s Disclosure Committee, which reviewed the company's earnings materials and SEC filings before they were made public, and "mined these materials for inside information" to guide his stock sales, the DOJ said. Levoff sold large amounts of stock when financial results were bad and bought large amounts when results were good.

While at Apple, Levoff was subject to the company's “blackout periods,” in which employees who had access to nonpublic information were not allowed to buy or sell stock, but he ignored those restrictions.

“Despite being responsible for enforcing Apple’s own ban on insider trading, Levoff used his position of trust to commit insider trading in order to line his own pockets," U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna said in a statement.

Apple did not respond to request for comment from Protocol. Levoff's sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 10.

 Nat Rubio-Licht

Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

apple insider trading
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Bulletins