Ex-SEC Enforcer Charged With Stealing Data to Land PE Job

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/former-sec-employee-charged-with-stealing-data-to-land-new-job

By Patricia Hurtado
Bloomberg
October 23, 2019

When Michael Cohn left his job with the enforcement arm of the U.S. Securities 
and Exchange Commission in 2018, he took more than his ambitions to work on 
Wall Street, prosecutors say.

Before leaving, Cohn repeatedly hacked into the regulator’s computers and stole 
“highly sensitive” information about an ongoing regulatory probe that he used 
to land a $400,000-a-year job as chief compliance officer at the private equity 
firm that was being investigated, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday in announcing 
charges against Cohn.

Cohn, 59, disclosed the inside information while interviewing at GPB Capital 
Holdings LLC and accepted an offer for the new job four days after his last day 
with the government in October 2018, a prosecutor told a judge in Central 
Islip, New York, in a letter. Cohn had worked for the SEC’s asset management 
unit since 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He was charged with obstruction, obtaining information from a government 
computer and unauthorized disclosure of confidential information in a revised 
indictment made public on Wednesday.

“The defendant abused the trust placed in him as an SEC employee,” Brooklyn 
U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue said. “No one gets a pass for breaching the 
security of government computer networks and misusing sensitive and 
confidential information for their own benefit.”

[...]

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