New South Wales man pleads guilty to market manipulation (ASIC, 2014)

Judgment entered

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In October 2014 ASIC reported that Wahroonga day trader Nigel Derek Heath pleaded guilty in the Downing Centre Local Court to two market manipulation charges: 138 trades in Petsec Energy shares and CFDs that each lifted the price by 4 to 11.5 percent, and 30 matched trades across four resource stocks. Sentencing was set for 31 October 2014.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced this matter on October 16, 2014 as release 14-270MR. The respondents named are Nigel Derek Heath (1 individual, 0 entities).

According to the release, Heath traded through nine share and CFD accounts between February 2012 and October 2013. The first charge covers 138 trades in Petsec Energy products that each pushed the price up by roughly 4 to 11.5 percent. The second covers 30 transactions in which he bought and sold the same product at the same moment in four ASX-listed resource companies, which moved prices by roughly 3 to 7 percent.

No monetary relief is recorded. The A$765,000 figure in the release is the statutory maximum for each offence under the Corporations Act, not an amount ordered against Heath.

The release records guilty pleas in the Downing Centre Local Court; sentencing in the District Court had not yet taken place when it was published.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2014-10-16 ASIC media release

Primary documents

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• ASIC media release

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 3 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.