The United States is a capitalist society in which individuals and businesses alike eagerly pursue making money for themselves and their companies. This is the nature of the system yet there are some situations in which these efforts may lead people to be faced with allegations of criminal activity.
As explained by The New York Times, insider trading is a form of white collar crime that seems to be especially difficult for defendants to navigate. It is also a type of crime that has been involved in several recent cases.
Accusations of insider trading generally accompany situations in which a defendant or a group of defendants are found to have made profits from their activities. Again, making a profit is part and parcel of a capitalist economy but there are certain things that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice look for when they bring criminal charges against defendants for insider trading.
One of the factors evaluated is a pattern of profits, even if individual profits are not all that large. When prosecution teams can accuse people of giving in to greed, a defense can be difficult. Recent high-profile cases involving insider trading allegations involve the denial of dismissing charges against a former executive with a credit monitoring bureau. Prosecutors point to the defendant’s internet searches related to security breaches as part of their evidence against him as the man sold shares just prior to the announcement that the credit bureau had been impacted by a security breach.