A former Equifax executive has been charged with two counts of insider trading.
The Securities and Exchange Commission says Jun Ying sold his stock options days before Equifax revealed it suffered a massive data breach.
According to the SEC's complaint, Ying learned of the breach on Aug. 25, 2017 — two weeks before Equifax announced about 143 million people were affected by the hack. A few days later, the complaint says, Ying did online research about the 2015 hack of Equifax's competitor, Experian, and then unloaded nearly $1 million in stock options.
Had Ying held onto the stock, he would have lost $117,000, according to the commission. He was reportedly in line for a promotion until Equifax learned about his trading activity. He resigned in October.
And Ying's not the first Equifax exec to be investigated for insider trading. Four other company officials sold their shares, worth a combined $1.8 million, before the breach announcement. But the company said it determined those officials did not know about the breach when they made their trades.
