Friends charged with insider trading

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has brought a complaint against two men for trading on material nonpublic information in violation of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, 15 USC § 78j(b) and 17 CFR § 240.10b-5.  According to the complaint, in August 2015 and March 2016, Geoffrey Homer obtained insider information from his girlfriend, a high-ranking employee of Ulta Beauty, Inc., about Ulta’s upcoming earnings releases.  Homer then tipped his childhood friend Keith Daubenspeck, who purchased Ulta stock based on the material nonpublic information provided by Homer, and sold it following the company’s earnings release, profiting by $111,472.  In 2012, the SEC suspended Daubenspeck, who held FINRA licenses and ran a registered brokerage firm, from acting in a supervisory capacity in the securities industry for 12 months.

SEC press release | SEC complaint