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Sam Stewart Insider Fraud

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The SEC has three main purposes to serve the U.S. stock market. The first and most important is to protect investors by sustaining economic growth. In a sector as risky as the stock market the most important asset for any investor is to research. The SEC makes sure that publicly traded companies show financial statements so investors don’t blindly make financial decisions. In a private company that is not publicly traded the SEC makes sure that their financial information is not leaked. After this has been done publicly traded companies information is published and available for all to see. With reliable data available to the general public in the financial markets helps in transparency and minimizes fraud. The reason information is made public …show more content…

This is called insider trading and is one of the acts that the SEC is responsible for stopping. One of the most famous cases occurred in late 2001 in which one of America’s most famous woman was arrested. This person was Martha Stewart someone who everyone in America has seen on T.V. countless times. Stewart who owned four thousand shares of ImClone stock was imprisoned for five months after being found guilty of insider trading by the SEC. The C.E.O of the company ImClone, Sam Waksal was found to be the main culprit in the case. Waksal discovered that his company would be taking a huge hit in the stock market. The C.E.O urged his broker to sell the stock because if he were too keep it would have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. When asking his broker to dump the stock a natural instinct took over and the broker knew that something was going to happen to the company forcing its stock to drop. Waksal and Stewart however shared the same broker, when the news was conveyed to the broker Martha was urged to sell her stocks. After she did the SEC charged her with insider trading for selling her stock with illegal information. Even though Martha did not directly receive the information she still used critical information that was only available to a select few in her favor. This forced the SEC to carry out its purpose and maintain fair, orderly, and efficient

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