Chinese ‘corporate hackers’ accused of attacking US law firms
The three, including two suspects from Macau, charged with stealing information on corporate deals, allowing them to profit from share trading
The US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday charged three Chinese citizens with fraudulently trading on information they had obtained from hacking into the email networks of two New York City law firms, hauling in almost US$3 million in illicit profits.
In a complaint unsealed on Tuesday, the commission said that between April 2014 and late 2015 Iat Hong and Chin Hung from Macau, and Bo Zheng from Changsha, Hunan province, installed malware on the law firms’ networks, thereby gaining access to the email accounts of attorneys advising corporate clients on mergers and acquisitions. Armed with proprietary information on these clients, the trio traded big.
The commission said the three spent roughly US$7.5 million on shares of semiconductor company Altera before news of it being in talks to be acquired by Intel Corporation became public.
In addition, hours after extracting emails about a deal involving an e-commerce company, Hong and Hung purchased shares that amounted to 25 per cent of the company’s trading volume on certain days in advance of the 2015 deal’s announcement.
Hong and Zheng are also accused of trading in 2014 ahead of a merger announcement of a pharmaceutical company. They also stole schematic designs of a robot vacuum cleaner made by an American company, the commission’s complaint said.