ASIC v. Steven Oakes (insider trading, 2019)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 2, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In June 2019 IT consultant Steven Oakes was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, released after 18 months, after pleading guilty to 11 charges including insider trading and unauthorised access to a financial publisher's network to obtain unpublished stock recommendations.

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 the sentence on June 25, 2019 as release 19-153MR.

Between January 2012 and February 2016 Oakes hacked the network of Port Phillip Publishing to read unpublished buy recommendations and used them on 70 occasions to buy shares in 52 companies before publication, selling soon after.

The record previously showed no outcome.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique 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.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2019-06-25 ASIC media release

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• 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.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.